[Peace-discuss] Mike Gravel on Palin

[C. G. Estabrook]

*You think it important whether a candidate is a creationist or not (and I 
don't): that's being "exercised by religion."

*On the "guns & religion" argument, see Thomas Franks' book: that's what Bartels 
was critiquing.

*You still don't respond to the two points I made in the original post.  Is my 
description of Biden correct?  Is Bartels right about the distraction of he elite?

*If I "lambaste the Democrats far more than the Republicans," it's because 
they're the ones who need to be exposed.  They pretend to be anti-war, when they 
aren't -- as should have been obvious since the 2006 election, but for some in 
the anti-war movement, hope springs eternal.  That seem to make them open to 
co-option by the Democrats, who've been working hard at it.

*I think Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas -- and Roberts and Alioto -- are unfortunate 
appointments. (Biden, in a position to stop them, didn't.)  But they weren't 
appointed for their views on abortion but rather on business.  Liberals' 
distrust of democracy and the ignorant mob has for too long now meant that they 
looked to the courts to accomplish their political goals.

*Polling is tout court unscientific and can therefore be disregarded?

*I have no "implicit favoritism of the Bush/Cheney, soon to be a McCain gang," 
unless my unwillingness to collude in the cover-up of Obama's defects is enough 
   to constitute that.

*You have seemed just a bit passionate about my criticisms of the Democratic 
candidate.


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>   Comments below. 
> 
> On Sep 3, 2008, at 3:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> You're flailing a bit here, Mort. Some of our friends even seem to 
>> think I spend
>> too much time stating my own opinions, but I obviously haven't got 
>> them across
>> too well to you -- perhaps because I'm an affluent, college-educated 
>> person who
>> unlike you is not particularly "exercised by guns and religion."
> 
> I believe that you are much exercised by religion. I've listened to 
> argumentation with Paul Mueth on your (former) WEFT program. As to guns, 
> I don't know which guns you refer to. 
>>
>> In your criticism of what you take to be my views you don't address 
>> the two
>> points I actually make:
>>
>> [1] "Biden is..."
>>
>> [2] "...social issues are the opiate..."
> 
> As often happens, you beg the question by bringing up non sequiturs. My 
> point is that you lambaste the Democrats far more than the Republicans, 
> and in particular Obama and Biden more than McCain and (now) his new 
> choice for vice-president. 
> I have no illusions about the foreign policies of a Biden or Obama; 
> there are only marginal differences (which may be important) here from 
> those of the Bush administration and the neocons. I would only note that 
> we have stark evidence of the Bush/Cheney policies; no guesses are 
> necessary. For Obama, there is a degree of uncertainty, e.g.,  diplomacy 
> before bombs, thus a glimmer of hope, and in this sense perhaps a 
> meaningful distinction between them. On domestic issues, which evidently 
> you deem unimportant, so called "social issues"!,  there are meaningful 
> differences. Such as nominations to the Supreme Court. I have the 
> feeling that you would be happy, though not admitting so, with another 
> Scalia, Rehnquist or Thomas there, so that women's and constitutional 
> rights would continue to be eroded. 
>>
>> I suppose that's because the first is obviously true; but your 
>> unwillingness to
>> look at the evidence ("I care not what Larry Bartels ... says") for 
>> the second
>> strikes me as a bit unscientific.
> 
> Science has no application here. Political scientists come out on all 
> sides of almost every issue. 
>>
>> My "polemical emails" (who would do such a thing?) are an attempt to 
>> convince
>> members of an anti-war movement that the presidential election is 
>> meant to be a
>> distraction and that the pretense that the Democratic candidate is 
>> anti-war is a
>> fraud.
> 
> I' m led to think that your anti-war credentials are compromised by your 
> implicit favoritism of the Bush/Cheney, soon to be a McCain gang. Your 
> constant harping on Obama's defects seem obsessive. 
>>
>> In our America, policy is well-insulated from politics -- we have at 
>> best a
>> simulacrum of democracy -- and a serious anti-war movement has to 
>> recognize
>> that, if it's not to be co-opted.  Passionately preferring a candidate 
>> within
>> the allowable limits of debate is a recipe for irrelevance.
> 
> Who's passionately preferring a candidate? Again a begging of the 
> important questions.
>>
>> That's what they want you to do. --CGE
>>
>>
>> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>> I care not what Larry Bartels, an élitest academic 
>>> [http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/biography.html], says. You needn't 
>>> quote someone else for what are your own opinions, all the more 
>>> ironic in this case
>>>  in that you too seem to be one of the élites excoriated. Perhaps 
>>> you—I'm not
>>>  sure about Bartels— would be happy with a theocratic state, a 
>>> Catholic or fundamentalist one one no doubt, that would forbid a 
>>> woman's right to choose and get rid of public education among other 
>>> things. McCain might be happy with that as well. I'm getting fed up 
>>> with your polemical emails, which seem to do nothing but attempt to 
>>> convince readers to make it possible for a McCain presidency.
>>> --mkb
>>> On Sep 3, 2008, at 2:09 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> Biden is a perfectly conventional tool of militarist and corporate 
>>>> interests, responsible for murderous policies at home and abroad, 
>>>> from the Middle East war to the new bankruptcy law. Insofar as she 
>>>> departs from those policies, I (like Gravel) would prefer Palin.
>>>> As Larry Bartels points out, "it is affluent, college-educated 
>>>> people ... who are most exercised by guns and religion. In 
>>>> contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the 
>>>> elites." --CGE