Elevating the Discourse

A tip of the chapeau to these fine patriots for engaging in the time-honored American tradition of civil discourse:

• Mike Gallagher:

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.

• Joe Klein, who managed in a post about John Edwards to call John Kerry "Frenchy," then invisibly change it to "him" without making a correction or a strike-through or anything, then "apologize" like so:

Update: A number of readers have informed me that it's bad blog etiquette to edit substantively--to change "Frenchy" to "him" in midstream. Sorry. New at this. Didn't know. As for making fun of Kerry, Frenchy was more accessible than "The-Jerk-Who-Actually-Held-Focus-Groups-To-Figure-Out-What-To-Say-About-Abu-Graib-And-then-Decided-to-say-nothing-because-that's-what-his-consultants-told-him-to-do." But I must ask: no comments on the courageous positions Edwards took with Simon? Don't you guys care about substance?

First of all, the guy who wrote "Frenchy" is complaining that his critics aren't talking about substance. Second, bloggers have been talking about Edwards' stands on taxes and how there is a "tension" between eliminating the deficit and investing in what America needs. They've been talking about it for a month.

During this time, Klein was coming up with new ways to insult John Kerry (how about "The Belgian") and measuring chest hairs with Jim Webb and John McCain.

(By the way, the comments in that thread are hilarious. Swampland is becoming my favorite lunchtime diversion)

• And there's this deadly assault on logic, in reaction to this thought-provoking piece by David Bell in the LA Times about how the reaction to 9-11 may have been a wee bit over the top. Here's Bell's first paragraph:

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

Here's the J-Pod approved response...

While “only” 2,973 people died on 9/11, they died at the rate of 29 people per minute. Taking Mr. Bell’s opening scenario one step further, had Islamofascists murdered 29 people here during every minute of the year following 8:46 a.m. EST on 9/11, more than 11 million would have been slaughtered. Is that a few more than the United States loses in traffic accidents each year, Mr. Bell?

So, if 9-11 happened every minute of the year, then that would be really bad! And the fact that it didn't happen just proves that it could happen! Or something.

This reminds me of this Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin illustrates the logic two-step:

Scientist: The first thing that Dr Kramer came up with was that the penguin has a much smaller brain than the man. This postulate formed the fundamental basis of all his thinking and remained with him until his death.

Cut back to the scientist now with diagram behind him. It shows a man and a six foot penguin.

Scientist Now we've taken this theory one stage further. If we increase the size of the penguin until it is the same height as the man and then compare the relative brain sizes, we now find that the penguin's brain is still smaller. But, and this is the point, it is larger than it was!

Making the point that you can make a point without having any point at all. Oh, and that I love Monty Python.

UPDATE... Can't forget Joe Biden in this mix, and here's the audio of his Obama smear. You can make a case that "first mainstream African-American candidate" and "clean, articulate, etc." were two different sentences, but everything Biden said is a code word for a "good kind of black," not the horrible, scary, freeloading kind.