The Somali pirates are not terrorists. They are criminals.

The Somali pirates who are stalking the waters off the horn of Africa are not terrorists. They are not motivated by ideology or by the desire to gain political advantage over any country or society by terrorizing its citizens. They are not engaging in the indiscriminate killing of civillians.

The pirates are criminals. They are motivated by money. They hijack seafaring vessels and hold the crews and cargo for ranson. They are kidnappers and thieves. That is not terrorism. That is crime.

With that in mind, it is distressing to see Time's Joe Klein attempt to fit for-profit hijacking into the "War on Terror" frame even as he praises the Obama administration for its successful resolution of last week's hostage crisis.

[P]resident Obama appears to have been crisp and decisive throughout...and what can one say about the SEAL sharpshooters--firing from a bobbing ship at a bobbing dinghy and recording three headshots?

But it could easily have gone wrong, through no fault of the President and the SEALs--a gust of wind, whatever...and then the Administration would have had to waste all sorts of energy on damage control, fending off the second-guessers--Republicans and, all too often, people like me--and perhaps overreacting to the pirate "threat" as a result. Presidencies are, sadly, built or crippled on such quirks of fate.

As it stands, our socialist, pacifist, crypto-Muslim President has bagged three terrorist in the most dramatic fashion and saved a Captain. Congratulations to all concerned--and let's hope that the good luck continues to roll.

I expect this kind of intellectual laziness from the likes of Debbie Schlussel and Red State.

But Time Magazine? One would imagine they can do better.

Stephen King: 'Waterboard Jenna Bush!'

Let her decide if it's torture.

So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.

The author also thinks Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan should be TIME magazine's next Persons of the Year

"You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you're missing the whole fox hunt." Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who's gonna get custody of Britney's kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit.

[...]

Britney Spears is just trailer trash. That's all. I mean, I don't mean to be pejorative [No, you mean it the nice way people say "trailer trash" - ed.]. But you observe her behavior for the past five years and you say, "Here's a lady who can't take care of her kids, she can't take care of herself, she has no retirement fund, everything that she gets runs right through her hands." And yet, you know and I know that if you go to those sites that tell you what the most blogged-about things on the Internet are, it's Britney, it's Lindsay. So I think it would be terrific [to have them as TIME Persons of the Year]. There would be such a scream from the American reading public, sure. But at the same time, it's time for somebody to discuss the difference between real news and fake news.

I might have to start reading his books again.

Swamped

I have to say, I just don't see this little experiment lasting too long. Frankly, it's probably already time to put it out of its misery.

Former Republican congressman Dick Armey, in his new position as a blogger at Time's Swampland, took on, in one short post, Social Security, healthcare, energy independence, teacher's unions, and summer vacation (!). Within the context of a critique of Tuesday's GOP candidates' debate, and bouncing from one topic to the next with zero factual followthrough, Armey's post amounted to nothing more than an unordered list of conservative think-tank talking points.

On Social Security:

The impending collapse of Social Security and Medicare will be the largest bankruptcy in human history. It is an avalanche aimed squarely at the American economy.

On education:

We heard a great deal about the American family, but no candidate talked about education, or more importantly, the decay within our nation's schools. This month millions of kids are out of school for summer break. If only we could break the stranglehold of union control over the classroom.

On energy policy:

It is not by accident that America has a similar amount of refining capacity as we did in the 1970s and no new nuclear generation in more than a generation.

Cars don't run on sound bites, homes are not heated by good intentions, and demagoguery continues to dominate the energy debate. We need more than sound bite based policy, like 20 percent of alternative fuels by 2020. (And the Democrats are even more misguided.)

On healthcare:

Republicans are heading in the right direction in health care. Giuliani advocated individual control of health care spending. Hunter says you should be able to buy health care from across state lines.

This sort of empty rhetoric might play well at Republican campaign rallies and at AEI luncheons, but unfortunately for Dick Armey, the readers at Swampland are significantly more discerning and knowledgeable than the GOP faithful at whom he is accustomed to bloviating. Their reactions were merciless.

If you had a clue, you would know that Social Security cannot go bankrupt -- one would assume a former Congressman who claims to be concerned about the issue would know that the Social Security law is written in such a way that if there ever comes a time when the trust fund runs out of money and Social Security tax receipts are less than scheduled benefits, benefits are reduced.

In other words, if/when the trust fund is depleted, the law says that Social Security becomes PAYGO with reduced benefits.

Anyone who actually understand the issue understands this much --- so why the heck are we being subjected to these flat out lies?

Posted by p_lukasiak
June 5, 2007
***
Mr. Armey, you are clearly out of your depth when talking about the so-called impending demise of Social Security. But go ahead, do please keep talking about privatizing it. Convince your friends and family, too. And the candidates of your party. Please. No really.

Posted by James, Los Angeles
June 5, 2007
***
Umm, what are you saying here? Those evil unions force our children out of their schools? Turning them out on their ears?

That's what I want to see in our next Republican presidential candidate: a bold willingness to denounce summer vacation.

And be sure to blame vacations on the unions! That'll win over the working stiffs.

Posted by John
June 5, 2007
***
Dick:

Link to the sources of your 'facts' so that the rest of us can scrutinize them. It's a tool commonly used by those interested in making legitimate arguments.

Posted by Nick
June 6, 2007
***
Dick,

Maybe you should try writing a post about one topic. Make it about two or three paragraphs. Have one or two sentences that state a conclusion. Fill the rest of he post with facts that support your conclusion.

Right now you are just jumping from topic to topic without saying anything. You have three sentences on health care and three sentences on energy in one post. Those are big topics. You can't get much substance out of that.

If you are going to write something like "If only we could break the stranglehold of union control over the classroom," you are going to have to include in your post an argument about why union control is bad. Otherwise you are just spouting platitudes.

The kind of stuff you are writing might be ok for cable news where the goal is to fill 15 seconds of air time. Blogging is different. The point isn't to fill up space. The point is to express an argument and support it, preferably with verifiable facts.

P.S. platitudes are not facts.

Posted by Carneyvore
June 6, 2007

And it goes on and on and on like that.

In a speech to the GOP faithful, platitudes such as the ones Armey spouts here are usually followed by thunderous cheers. They are , after all, typically used as applause lines. On the cable shout shows, the followup is non-existent, so he and his ideological brethren can rail against all the usual targets all the live long day and never worry about being challenged on a factual basis.

As Anonymous Liberal pointed out in a critique of an earlier Armey post, the blogosphere, at least the left-leaning blogosphere, is a different animal.

As regular patrons of the blogosphere are well aware, right-wing blogs rarely have comment sections, particularly unmoderated ones. They don't have them for precisely this reason: because much of what passes for commentary in right-wing circles is just not factually or logically supportable. And if these blogs had comment sections, a bunch of people who know better would point out all the logical and factual flaws in every post.

There is no better example of a functioning marketplace of ideas than a blog with an active and open comment section. The fact that most right-wing commentators choose not to engage with this market speaks volumes about their confidence in their own ideas.

I suspect Armey is wondering just what on earth he has gotten himself into. I suspect also that unless he has the discipline to accept the criticism and use it to actually get better at blogging, he won't be able to endure much more of this.