Bill of particulars:
1. Rationalized American use of torture;
2. Approved of the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld;
3. Confirmed torture-loving AG Alberto Gonzales.
A commonly-cited complaint against Lieberman is his excoriation of Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. He was right to do that: lefties need to get over it. Clinton disgraced himself, and deserved to be criticized. Calling this a “stab in the back” is over the top.
His insistence on moral clarity in that situation makes his equivocation on torture and Iraq utterly inexplicable. Look at his statement on confirming Gonzales, and you’ll see an argument that’s based on moral relativism, red herrings, and frankly, outright falsehoods. The moral relativism is displayed in the idea that the rules on detainees may be bent, depending on the situation. The red herrings are in his agreement with Gonzales that the provisions of the Geneva convention are “quaint” — canteen privileges, athletic uniforms, etc. — a statement which willfully ignores the reality of torture at Gitmo.
Finally, this statement was and is false: “The detainees will not be subjected to physical or mental abuse or cruel treatment. That is the policy that Judge Gonzales helped them form. That is the policy that our government issued.” If “policy” means “words”, then perhaps he’s right. But “policy” *must* mean “that which is actually done,” otherwise words are meaningless.
This is not about punishing someone for having integrity and principles; rather, it seems pretty clear that Joe Lieberman has lost track of his. Joe Lieberman got confused somewhere: he equated supporting the President with supporting his country, and equated criticizing the President with “undermining his credibility.” But at its heart, that’s not a principled stand; it’s a political stand. If the President manifestly does not deserve that credibility, then at the very least, good faith criticism must be leveled in order to keep the President on track. Lieberman has been an enabler for dishonesty, brutality, and incompetence, and as such he must go.
Way to go you guys! As you might recall, I was an early adopter. Do I get points for my sage political foresight?
Hell, yes!
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And you can add to my bill of particulars Lieberman’s lame ass excuse regarding womens healthcare choices.
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From Connecticut Bob:
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Lieberman said he believes hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for “principled reasons” shouldnât be forced to do so.
“In Connecticut, it shouldnât take more than a short ride to get to another hospital,” he said.
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Screw that. We need a senator that truly stands up for Democratic values.
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Go Team Ned!
Your list of particulars looks a lot like the NYT’s – that you guys linked to this weekend…in fairness, you did add “He has a proven track record of management ability that Lieberman lacks.” (Mgmt ability? For a senator?? Heck, if you like it in the Senate of all places, I Look fwd to your endorsement of Mitt For Prez!)
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Anyway…..how do BMG endorsements work? Does it have to be unanimous among the 3 of you? Or do you handle it the way my colleagues and I make most of our decisions….hang around, drink, and then say “Why don’t we….”
Was there are a poll of which I wasn’t aware, or is it down to the three editors?
see my longer comment downthread.
is unanimous among the three of us. Ideally, as much beer as possible is involved in the decisionmaking process. 😉
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And in Bob and Charley’s defense (they drafted this one), they circulated a draft of the endorsement well before the NYT endorsement appeared.
Bob pretty much wrote everything before the flip, I did everything after, with Bob’s light editing. David smiled and nodded.
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Saturday morning, before I saw the NYT endorsement, I sent out the draft of the three particulars — to which I would add Lieberman’s shameless 360, no-look, behind-the-back shake-n-bake on bankruptcy (voted against the bill, voted for cloture, took credit for opposing the bill).
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We don’t have a policy, but it stands to reason that if it’s a BMG endorsement, we all agreed on it. We’ll have more of those.
a GM endorsement (candidate must be pro union)
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an MG endorsement (Robert Reich size)
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a GB endorsement (pro cheese)
“benevolently.” I smiled and nodded benevolently. 😉
I fully support Ned Lamont on the condition that Joe does the honorable thing and backs down after primary voters have made their decision. If he runs as an Indy the DSCC will be forced to waste 06 resources on fighting Joementum. In any case I still applaud the endorsement, principles over politics every day and even if it could hurt us in 06 it will send a powerful message that liberals in this party, progressives, grassroots activists, and simply mainstream Democrats tired of being marginalized must be taken seriously.
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That said my one criticism is that a politburo of three made the endorsement, I think a democratic vote of all BMG members should have been used, its not like the result would have been any different. So for future endorsements democracy over oligarchy.
Vivent les trois rois.
I, personally, offer myrrh to the citizens of the Commonwealth.
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2. I COMPLETELY disagree about Lieberman’s role in the Clinton scandle. Firstly, it was hypocrisy 101. It wasn’t okay for a President to cheat on his wife, but it’s perfectly fine to lie about a war that’s cost thousands of Americans and hundreds of billions of wasted taxdollars?
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Furthermore, it wasn’t that Lieberman thought Clinton’s scandal deserved investigation or that he should even be impeached. Heck, Senator Feingold is one of the netroots’ favorite candidates for President – and he was also in favor of Clinton being further investigated. However, he didn’t provide the Republicans cover to attack Clinton and the entire party, or use that moment bloviate/grandstand in TVs across America.
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Joe Lieberman has been doing Connecticut a disservice for a long time. Finally, after years of said disservice, they’re finally waking up to his ineptitude and selfishness and doing their constitional service by putting a sucky elected official on notice.
You’re anachronizing (sic) things a bit. Monica was 1998. Iraq War 2003-present. Yeah, Joe’s a hypocrite, but that wasn’t 100% clear until this administration. BTW, what about Joe’s speech criticizing Clinton do you disagree with? I think he expressed the embarassment and anger at Clinton that a lot of Democrats were feeling, including myself. And I don’t think there’s any question but that if Clinton had stayed zipped up, we’d be six years into the Gore presidency. For all that can be laid at Joe’s feet, that’s not his fault. And indeed, he did vote not guilty on both counts.
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And Ryan, you are free to not endorse whomever you don’t wish to endorse on your own (esteemed) blog. There are three of us, and we don’t agree on everything. When we do, there’s an endorsement. What it means is up to the reader. It’s more of a heads-up (as if anyone needed it) than anything else; just one more droplet in the popular wave.
as we see it. What is an endorsement but a way of saying “here’s who we’re voting for (or, in the case of Lamont, who we’d vote for if we could and who we’re supporting financially or otherwise), and we hope you’ll vote for and support this person too”? Isn’t getting the right candidates elected a big part of why we’re all doing this?
Count me among those surprised to find BMG suddenly endorsing folks without so much as a poll.
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I’d started to think of this place as a community guided by the benevolent hands of B,C and D; guess I was wrong about that.
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Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, and I’m certainly not going anywhere; BMG is still the best game in town. I’m just disappointed, is all. I’d misread the proprietors’ intentions…
Allow me to further say that an endorsement from BMG will, I think, mean a good deal less to the world at large if it’s just “les trois rois” than if it is a community agreement.
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Not that, I think, it will influence things a heck of a lot either way. But it is something to think about.
Here’s where I am on this. First, this isn’t the first time we’ve endorsed a candidate. But the site was a lot smaller then, and these are bigger races. So that’s not necessarily binding precedent (as it were).
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That said, I think we’re doing this the right way. As Charley stated in rather more colorful language, it’s our blog. We started it not just to provide a gathering place – though we are VERY happy that it has become that – but also to back candidates who we believe will advance the values that we think are essential to re-establishing the Democratic party as one of inclusion, social and economic justice, fiscal responsibility, etc. When the three of us agree on who those candidates are, it would be contrary to the reason we started this thing not to “endorse,” i.e., publicly back, them, and to urge others to do the same.
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And, of course, we encourage those who disagree with us to say so, and to explain why we got it wrong. In the future, maybe we’ll post a poll along with our endorsement so you can vote on whether we got it right or wrong. But there’s really no feasible way of actually figuring out who the BMG community as a whole wants to endorse. Internet polls can be freeped; comments represent only a small percentage of people who visit here; and we don’t have the time or the ability to actually conduct a free and fair election.
It comes down to a definition of BMG, as I see it. Is BMG the three of you, or is it all of us? This endorsement and other similar actions are saying, straight and simply, that BMG == Bob, Charlie, and David.
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Which, I want to make plain, is not wrong. But it seems like it’s not what a lot of us had thought/expected.
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As for how to hold theoretical endorsing elections… Hold a poll, open only to accounts that have existed for over a month (possibly further limit it to accounts that have visited the site during that period, etc), and crack down as hard as you can on duplicate accounts.
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Or, slightly more authoritarian, limit it to trusted users. Like you effectively do now, but where trusted users == Bob, Charlie, David, stomv, Lynn, FrankSkeffington, Cos, DanielShays… you get the picture. Handpicked folks who are the heart and soul of this “community”.
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I’m just throwing ideas out there. I’m not saying you need to change things, just that if you wanted to change things, it’s not nearly so infeasible as you make it out to be.
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As I said, it comes down to the definition of BMG. It could be just the three of you, it could be a core cadre of established users, it could be everybody who’s been around for a while, or it could be anybody who wanders in the door. At the moment, though, it’s definitely just the three of you.
Hwaet!
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Good for you! It’s your site. We’re invited to play in the playground, but we should not forget who pays for the equipment. I hope to see more of your endorsements, too, because those who disagree with your choices can offer up their reasons why. That’s, in my view, what this is about.
Meanwhile, I love your Beowulf shout-out.
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Have you ever seen Ben Bagby perform it, in the original Anglo-Saxon? One of the best nights of theatre I’ve ever experienced – and it’s just him and his harp reciting the poem. See it if you have a chance – you’ll be so glad you did.
to see that Bagby performance. Doesn’t look like it’s anything close to local until New York in 2007. What a treat that would be. I’ve recently started teaching myself Old English as it’s always been an interest of mine. I used to be fairly adept at Middle English (in fact, fluency in Middle English fulfilled my foreign language requirement in graduate school–comes in real handy, lol), but have lost a lot of it. The OE is quite a bit harder as the familiar signposts and syntax just aren’t there.
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I’ve taught Beowulf–the outstanding translation by Seamus Heaney–paired with John Gardner’s Grendel, and I have to say it’s one of my favorite units. I’m so looking forward to the August 11th screening of Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel at the Landmark in Kendall Square. I’ve been following the making of this film for over two years and watching it make its way around the world. It’s finally here. Yay!
Their paying for a website, big deal, is this not a community of people meeting together to discuss, I have contributed posts to this blog and I decided to share some of my opinions with other people to build towards a greater consensus, I think if this was merely a ranting board for Charley and the other editors, oh and the admonition that I should get my own expletive blog was really mature and shows how much you care about your readers, then you wouldnt care what we think, but by allowing us to post you are saying you do care and if you truly do care than we should be allowed to endorse whichever candidates we want in a democratic vote, and its not like setting up a poll is that hard or that the outcome would be any different.
First, I’m not quite sure why you responded here with this point as it took me a few minutes to see how your response related to Beowulf, but then I caught on, so…..
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Second, the “equipment” reference is in the context of my following metaphor and is not meant to be taken literally:
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In other words, since this is not our “playground,” we utilize the playground “equipment” at the whim of the owners. We don’t get to tell the owners how to run the “playground,” but they are certainly free to ask our opinion when it suits them.
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Also, since your response is attached to my comment, I’ll take the opportunity to note, too, that this sentiment:
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No, by allowing you to post, the owners signal, in my opinion, that they are interested in the opinions of others as they contribute to a wider discussion that is fruitful and enjoyable. This isn’t a co-op and it isn’t a commune. You are here as a guest of the hosts who pay for and maintain this site, no matter how trivial you believe their investment of time, talents, and finances is.