Comments on The Morning News

Sorry Dan, there's no on/off switch to the Iraq war. There can only be a phased pullout as conditions permit. Please make a note of it.

I can't believe you didn't mention anything about Kathy Sheehan running against Pelosi. What a maroon.

Standing room only on Metro for the next few weeks. Wonder if this will ecourage people to want to fund public transit or just turn them off even more to the idea of public transit once the shut down happens.

And we have all learned the Democrats do not seem willing to end the war. I mean they could simply NOT present a military funding bill of any sort and cut the money off entirely. (That is how we ended Vietnam BTW).

These Democrats are not our parent's Democratic party, our parent's deomcratic party had BALLS!!!

I watched "Caligula" last night and have a new nick name for the President. Let's call him "Little Boots".

If you have seen the movie you may just agree. I mean GOP=Caligula....Think about it.

Re: End the Fucking War...Dan, I'm surprised you would temp the trolls with this. How long 'til some douchebag posts some quote you made 5 years ago?

Re: The Dems Court the Gays...I'm really disappointed in Richardson. He basically closed the coffin on his candidacy. Not surprised otherwise. The only candidates with balls on this or any other subjext are the ones with no chance. Pity...

Governor Richardson, could you tell us the exact day and time that you chose to be attracted to women?

As a follow up, could you choose to be attracted to men and want a relationship with another man?

What a moron.

Yeah, I was expecting Caligula to be more pornariffic, make note to hip hippy bandmate about Rome tourist HOT spot/studio- fire on the mountain (Empire)

@2 Who's Kathy Sheehan?

Yeah, Dan, a lot of us knew the war was a lie when Bush forced the Senate vote in October 2002.

Doug, Patty Sheehan was an LPGA sensation.

sourcemind: grootepedia ink

Once a war is begun it is very difficult to stop. That is why so many of us were opposed to the war in Iraq before it started. Even those of us who thought chasing down OBL before he got away in Afgahnistan were opposed to the war.

Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage should be in uniform and marching through the sand right now.

Thanks at least for mentioning the Port's decision to bulldoze the Lora Lake apartments. Too bad The Stranger never spent any ink on this story . . . you let the fat cats and Port bureaucrats get away with this. Thanks for your "alternative" voice.

@12, I think (but could be wrong) that there was something pretty brief on Slog a few days ago about this. But even then it was not much time spent on it at all. Yeah, Burien and the developers really fucked a lot of people with that bone-headed Republican minded choice.

Ditto on rain monkey #11. I can honestly say I saw all this coming. I was thinking it as the towers were falling. "He's going to use this to start a war so he doesn't have to be a real President." Ooh, guess what, he did.

As for Dan and Andrew, I have to assume they've learned their lesson on this one. At least I hope. The horse is dead, no need to continue beating it.

I hope that lawsuit is successful and the Port is forced to rebuild Lora Lake elsewhere.

Yeah, Cato, The Slog was interested in Port Commissioner John Creighton's angry e-mail, I think because it used the word "bullshit" and then in David Postman's comment on the posting because it used the word "fuck." So the most the Slog dealt with it was on the language aspect. Which is of course very, very, very, very serious. Meantime, the media outlets that spent actual ink and paper on this were: a) the P-I, b) Real Change, c) the Times, d) the Weekly and then broadcast-wise were a) KING, b)KUOW, c)KOMO, d) KCPQ. About the only significant MIA media outlet was "Seattle's Only Newspaper," The Stranger. However, there's plenty of time to write about "bullshit" and "fuck" while 162 units of affordable housing are being bulldozed. Nice job, Stranger.

Mike in MO:

I'll be the douchebag.

The above anti-war message was delivered to me via a sad-looking pink poster. I pulled the poster off a light pole and hung it in my office over my desk. I look at the poster every day when I sit down to work, and every day I wonder how and when the American left lost its moral compass.

See, Mike, the problem I have with all this isn't just that Dan supported the war; it's that he framed his support for the war in terms of an absolute moral and intellectual failure on the part of everyone on the left who opposed his agenda. He didn't just claim that his view was justified; he claimed that my view was immoral and stupid; that my refusal to support the war was actually based on some form of moral cowardice.

But Dan's willingness to believe that:

"The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein."

was always based on moral cowardice. The White House did not advance a viable plan. One had only ever to look at troop levels to recognize that -- let alone consider the history of the region. Dan's justifications were based on fear: fear of 9/11, fear for himself. The reason he fell for Bush's bullshit isn't that Bush was an exceptionally good liar, it's that Dan was afraid of getting hurt so he was willing to let himself be lied to.

Post-9/11, post-Bali, what other choice do we have?

Dan has only ever advocated in favor of his own unenlightened self-interest and his inability to recognize or admit to that is pretty fucking irritating, especially since he's always so fucking sure he's right and so willing to make himself the spokesperson for his own poorly-conceived agenda: you will know we are christians by our every child needs a mother and a father nader voters handed the election to Bush bullshit.

If Dan was a guy who could shut the fuck up and let something slide, I might be inclined to do likewise. But since Dan's the editor of "Seattle's only newspaper" and he can't seem to to let anything go, I'm inclined to keep taking shots at him. If he doesn't like it he can climb the fuck down off the bully pulpit.

So judah plays down to the level of people he doesnt like.

No Bellevue--Judah stands up and speaks his mind, something everyone on here has the right to do. Especially when people opt to dismiss them as "douchbags".

Judah @ 17,

You make some excellent points, but we need to forgive and move on. Dan has already admitted his mistake many times.

Besides, the headlines did not read "Seattle Sex Columnist Declares War on Iraq." It was Bush and some craven, cowardly Republicans and Democrats in Congress that got us into this, and totally incompetent military and civilian leadership that has allowed it to continue.

We need to focus on getting them to change since they have the power and stop our infighting.

I agree, when 9/11 happened all I could think about was that this gave them an excuse to do whatever they want. And they have, and now we're fucked.

I hope to god Romney loses the straw poll and goes away. I want to kill him.

"Seattle Sex Columnist Declares War on Iraq."

See now, this is one that annoys me. Dan didn't advocate for the war in "Savage Love", as a sex columnist. Dan advocated for the war in the News section, and the reason Dan got to do that is because he was/is the editor of the paper. There are and were plenty of writers at the Stranger more qualified to discuss the war than Dan. Dan got to express his opinion in the News section not because he was qualified, but because he was powerful. Which is pretty much the definition of a bully pulpit.

You make some excellent points, but we need to forgive and move on. Dan has already admitted his mistake many times.

Dan doesn't need me to forgive him, and that's hardly the point. Dan is still making decisions using the same sort of reasoning that informed his decision to encourage the war: unenlightened self-interest. Dan hasn't adequately addressed any of the long-term implications of his "pull out now" stance. He hasn't suggested or even endorsed a plan for dealing with the long-term problems -- American long-term problems -- that will arise from withdrawing the troops now. But, in spite of the fact that his critical analysis hasn't improved one iota since 2002, Dan continues to preach from the bully pulpit.

Our government started the war, but our government was only able to do that because the electorate was complicit. It' is patently disingenuous for us as Americans and tax-payers to fob responsibility for this war off on our political leaders. Meanwhile, those leaders were able to achieve the electoral consensus required for their agenda in large part through the support of the media. Dan is a major player in the Seattle media, he publicly supported the war in his capacity as editor of the Stranger, he did it based on a set of motives that has been demonstrated to lead us away from our own best interests, and he continues to act from those motives. First the electorate must remove the officials who advanced this agenda. Then we must critically assess the efficacy of media agents who supported that agenda; in other words, we mush shout down those who sling bullshit from the bully pulpit.

There is, therefore, a perfectly good reason to work towards creating consensus around the fact that Dan Savage's opinions about geopolitics are ill-informed and dangerous. One way to do that is to keep going after him in Slog. Dan himself understands this approach quite well, which is why he hammers away endlessly on the three points I raised above.

So.

ps to Boomer in NYC:

While I appreciate the support, I also have to say that Bellevue Ave is, more or less, correct. I do attack people in arguments all the time. He's incorrect in that he assumes I only do it to "people I don't like." Sometimes I do it to people I like perfectly well but disagree with strongly. It's an expression of pique, more than anything else. It is certainly my goal, in any case, to create arguments that would stand very well on their own even if (and probably even better if) all the insults were taken out.

Don't forget Dan's turn as the pro-war voice of Seattle on KCTS Connects.

Judah,

If you’re determined to go after someone, why not Ken Pollack and Mike O’Hanlon from the Brookings Institution? These two so-called “liberal hawks” have engaged in a relentless propaganda and disinformation campaign so shameless and dishonest it would make Joseph Goebbels blush. They continue to insist, as they have for years, that conditions are improving and Dear Leader’s insane plans are working.

Glenn Greenwald says it far better than I:

“What is the most vivid and compelling evidence of how broken our political system is? It is that the exact same people who urged us into the war in Iraq, were wrong in everything they said, and issued one false assurance after the next as the war failed, continue to be the same people held up as our Serious Iraq Experts. The exact 'experts' to whom we listened in 2002 and 2003 are the same exact establishment 'experts' now.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/30/brookings/

P.S. Forgiveness helps you just as much or more than the person you’re forgiving.

Joel Stein didn't say he hates dogs. He said he used to think he hated dogs, but now realises he is just apathetic. He said he hates dog OWNERS.

Judah,

My take on your point is that Dan Savage is a bully with a pulpit, and as such deserves what he gets when people have the temerity to remind him of some of the incredibly stupid things he has written.