The Goat Pen

Owlman wrote:So I was talking to one of my students today (she's in her 50's). Doesn't know what she's going to do if Romney gets elected. He's not a Christian because mormons aren't Christian. Santorum is Catholic and they aren't Christian because they pray to the pope (she's more scared of Santorum than Romney). Obama is not a Christian because he went to Rev. Wright's church (even though she has no idea what his church really did). Jimmy Carter was not a Christian but Reagan was a Christian. She's hoping that Paul runs as an independent because she thinks he's a Christian.

Jungle Rat wrote:This is sort of strange. How does someone lose to someone no one even knows?

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/2012 ... /303070133

Bear that in mind in this assessment of Breitbart's professional legacy, the aspect of his life I am most qualified to comment upon. It includes praiseworthy achievements. As Nick Gillespie noted at CNN, Breitbart played an important role in the creation or evolution of pioneering Web sites like The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, and his "Big" sites -- whatever one thinks about their content, they helped spur advances in the Web medium the fruits of which are now universally available. Said Gillespie, summing up who benefits, "It's the conservatives at Drudge, the liberals at HuffPo, the leftists at DailyKos, the libertarians at Reason. It's all of us and Breitbart helped create and grow a series of do-it-yourself demonstration projects through which we can all speak more loudly and more fully. Breitbart is dead, but the conversation pits he built will live on." Perhaps they'll even improve with time like The Huffington Post, which started out as a glorified online diary for celebrities. It's now publishing Radley Balko investigations. Breitbart also deserves credit for speaking in favor of including gays in the conservative movement and against its idiotic Birther faction, which he helped to pillory and marginalize.

Due to the untimeliness of Breitbart's death, there has been an understandable reluctance to examine his achievements alongside his shortcomings, especially on right-leaning Web sites, for arguing about the man's memory almost immediately turned into another skirmish between ideological tribes. But disagreeing about whether his professional legacy was a boon to the country, as many conservatives insist, or an overall detriment, as others claim, isn't likely to get us anywhere. Suffice it to say that even history's greatest heroes, beloved patriarchs, and loyal family dogs are imperfect. The most hard-core movement conservatives should be able to acknowledge that some aspects of Breitbart's professional life would be better repudiated than celebrated or copied, even if their overall assessment of the man remains emphatically positive.

What follows isn't an attempt to persuade you to share my conclusions about Breitbart's overall impact on the world. The reader can draw that conclusion as well as I can. But having remarked on his innovator's spirit, his contributions to the Web, his passion for his causes, his humor, and his loyalty to family and friends, it profits us to confront his flaws and transgressions forthrightly. Were he a monster, no one would be tempted to copy him. Precisely because he was a charismatic hero to many, avoiding his mistakes requires us to be unsentimental.

Neither personal friends nor ideological allies are particularly good at that, so their obituaries, while very much worth reading, are insufficient. As someone who met Breitbart just a few times, an outsider rather than a member of the conservative movement, and a critical observer of his career who thought deeply about his impact in the course of tangling with him, sometimes bitterly, this is my attempt at an unsentimental critique. What follows is the part of the Breitbart legacy his fans haven't confronted -- and more reasons why they valued him too.

Owlman wrote:I don't. She's otherwise quite smart in the law, but she accepts whatever her pastor tells her and reads only those specific books that reinforce it. It's actually quite amazing how narrow she is in this regard.

The report on Iran's state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as praising a recent statement by the U.S. president saying he saw a "window of opportunity" to use diplomacy to resolve the nuclear dispute.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in Iran, told a group of clerics: "This expression is a good word. This is a wise remark indicating taking distance from illusion."

It is one of the rare cases in which Iran's top leader praised an American leader.

Owlman wrote:based on that, why do you think Romney can't win?

"Gasoline prices have been rising since the New Year because of tensions with Iran, three northeast refineries closing and growing global demand have helped push crude oil prices higher."