Here’s the update that I promised. The transcript is now up and what a transcript it is. Here’s the graph I described about Markos the lawyer turning into Markos the engineer:

MR. MOULITSAS: Well, there’s just no doubt about that. I mean, there’s a real disagreement about how to best do that obviously. I mean, this all sounds great and, and, and wonderful, and obviously we can all get to—you know, we can all come around inequalities and opportunity and, and energy independence and that sort of thing. The problem we have, though, is we’ve, we’ve had a, a, an organization that, one, has, has been on the wrong side of a lot of ideas. We’re talking John Breaux, Senator John Breaux, who’s an architect of George Bush’s tax cuts, which have led our nation to record deficits, record debt, and a crumbling infrastructure, as we’ve seen in Katrina and as we’ve seen in, in Minnesota. I mean, crazy thing, but the American people want their bridges to stay in one piece. So we, we have a situation like that.

Wednesday, I talked about former St. Cloud mayor John Ellenbecker, now an attorney, who thought he was an engineer:

72. John Ellenbecker from St. Cloud
Comment Posted: 8/8/2007 1:13:53 PM

Gary - I retract nothing. This bridge disaster is the direct result of your party’s tax policies and your party’s administration of MnDot. Your party, in the name of creating greater “efficiency” in government, starved MnDot of funding, forced MnDot to operate on the cheap, administered MnDot very poorly and the bridge collapse was the result. Deny this reality all you want, it doesn’t change the facts.

Markos Moulitsas, another liberal attorney, made the charge that the Bush tax cuts led to the collapse of the I-35 bridge. What is it about these liberal attorneys that make them think that they’re qualified to answer engineering questions? Is it that they stayed at a Holiday Inn the night before?

Seriously, I think they’re so willing to jump to conclusions because their beliefs, devoid of verifiable proof, are sufficient for them to conclude certain things. Therein lies their problem. Rather than using scientific methods and verifying their data while testing it against a proven formula, liberals use a much simpler method. In their minds, because they know something wrong happened and because they don’t like the president, therefore they know beyond all doubt that his policies caused the problem.

Similarly, if anyone helped get the wrongdoer’s policies enacted, they’re guilty, too. They simply won’t entertain any alternative theories for what went wrong. For instance, they won’t consider the notion that federal highway trust fund dollars shouldn’t be used for bike trails. Likewise, they won’t accept the possibility that we shouldn’t be mandating that a minimum of 40 cents of each MVST dollar should be spent on LRT:

“Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to dedicate revenue from a tax on the sale of new and used motor vehicles over a five-year period, so that after June 30, 2011, all of the revenue is dedicated at least 40 percent for public transit assistance and not more than 60 percent for highway purposes?”

They won’t listen to that because LRT is another of their sacred cows. To suggest that we should actually put a higher appropriations priority on road and bridge maintenance was clearly unacceptable to the DFL.

Mr. Moulitsas, like John Ellenbecker, thinks that simply pouring more money at the problem will fix the problem. If that their theory was true, then how do they explain the Boston debacle known as the big dig? They kept pouring millions of dollars into that but it didn’t seem to change the basic problem.

This shot that Moulitsas took at the DLC is priceless:

MR. MOULITSAS: Because I don’t control hundreds of thousands of voices. You and your organization have a few dozen people. You can control that message. And you don’t need to attack Democrats.

That’s clearly meant to say “Your tiny little organization is irrelevant.” I suspect that Mr. Moulitsas thinks that that was one of his better moments. Here’s a less than shining moment for him:

MR. GREGORY: And the Republican Party. The Washington Post reported it this way, “According to a…Washington Post-ABC News poll…even among Democrats, there is no consensus about the timing of any troop withdrawal. While three-quarters want to decrease the number of troops in Iraq, only a third advocate a complete, immediate withdrawal.” Another issue important to the base and, and, by extension, the Net roots has to do with gay marriage. This is a Pew poll in January of this year. Look at the division allowing legal gay marriage, among Democrats, 49 percent in favor, 43 percent oppose.

Markos, does that make the point to you or at least raise the argument that some of what you’re arguing is not in the mainstream of the Democratic Party?

MR. MOULITSAS: Absolutely not. I mean…

MR. GREGORY: There’s more division.

MR. MOULITSAS: …on the, on the Iraq issue, this is semantics. Whether we get out in three months, six months or a year, there is a strong consensus, almost universal in our party, and vast majorities among the American public that people want out. People want this war to end. They want our troops home.

This exchange will sting in the long run. Mr. Moulitsas has just implied the following things:

• that most Americans are indifferent to victory;
• that Democrats’ pacifist desires trump good news from Iraq; and
• that their disagreement with President Bush is so strong that they’ll oppose his policies whether they’re working or not.

Now that facts are changing, I don’t think that that’s the dominant position at all. In fact, I think it will soon be the minority position. There’s a reason why Jim Clyburn said that a positive report from Gen. Petraeus is bad news for Democrats, that it might split the Democratic Party.

Think about that statement. Why would a positive report on Iraq split a political party? The only explanation is that partisans like Markos Moulitsas oppose everything that President Bush says or does. Let’s examine the implications of that statement.

It isn’t a stretch to say that his actions say that he’s more concerned with winning political victories than with the good of the nation. It’s impossible that he could harbor these thoughts if he put nation first and political party second.

There’s another fatal flaw in Moulitsas’ thinking. I’ve seen nothing to believe that he starts from a open-minded perspective. His mindset is that he and his like-minded minions know best. Here’s a sample of that elitism:

MR. MOULITSAS: You, you were on just on Fox News. So, clearly, we have a situation where you have an organization that’s been on the wrong side of the issues and has failed to really build a movement, has failed to really draw popular support. And it’s telling that five years ago, when I first came on the scene, I used to attack many organizations—organized labor. I used to attack a lot of the issue groups and—because I saw them all as part of this failed Democratic Party establishment. We were losing elections. At YearlyKos, we had all these organizations at the same table—labor, the issue groups. The one organization that was still missing was the DLC. That’s the one organization that refuses to acknowledge…(unintelligible)…with me.

Moulitsas isn’t criticizing a Republican with this statement. He’s telling another Democrat that the DLC, of which Joe Lieberman is a proud member, has been on the wrong side of “the issues” and that’s what sparked the Kos movement. Notice, too, the conviction and scorn with which Moulitsas talks about Fox. That first sentence is meant as an indictment against Ford. It’s essentially saying “You went on that evil network.” It’s like he’s saying that you can’t be a good Democrat and appear on FNC.

He said earlier that he’s just the leader of a movement, that he can’t control the every action of the movement but then he tells his minions that they can’t appear on FNC and still be a real Democrat.

Only someone who thinks that the Bush tax cuts caused the I-35 bridge collapse would be that arrogant. Only someone as arrogant as Moulitsas could think that getting out of Iraq is a matter of semantics. Only an arrogant man would tell another liberal organization that they’re irrelevant.

I don’t know when it’s coming but Moulitsas is pointing his movement towards an electoral disaster. It can’t happen soon enough.

Technorati Tags: Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos, Harold Ford, DLC, Iraq, Bridge Collapse, Bush Tax Cuts, Netroots

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. [...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Liberals, Iraq, Moonbats, President Bush, Blogs, Taxes, Anti-War Activists, Lawyers, Election 2008, Defeatocrats, Activism | [...]

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   Pingback by Markos v. Ford Update at Conservative Times--Republican GOP news source. — August 13, 2007 @ 11:48 am

1. All of the argument over the collapse of the I-35 bridge will be moot when the report comes out — years from now — on precisely why the bridge failed. What you ignore is the crumbling infrastructure all over the country, which is, at least in part, due to the tax cuts and consequential starving of specific programs, namely, road repair and maintenance. Of course, when that report finally comes out, the tragedy will be but a memory, and of little consequence to anyone save for those who lost their loved ones. (And then mAnn Coulter can call them names for speaking out about the issue… but I digress.)

   But I watched Markos on MTP, and am stating here, for the record, you are mischaracterizing his remarks regarding “semantics,” plain and simple. What he clearly said was that the specific timeframe is merely semantics; the thrust of what he said was that most — and 80% of the American people certainly qualifies as most — want the US out of Iraq. Americans are not so stupid as to think that this can happen overnight; but in 3 months, maybe 6 months and a year at the outside.

   It would be nice if conservatives could argue the merits and not nit-pick the semantics, but that would mean that 1) they understand the merits and the way that most of the populace feels (rather than how conservatives wished they felt, which in the conservative world is, as Turd Blossum says, how you make your “own reality”); and, 2) conservatives actually had a cohesive rationale for their argument. But the reality is that conservativethink is wrong.

   However…

   How you characterize Fox Noise is correct. The baiting, the libel, the clear bias towards conservatives on Fox is clear. At this point, they don’t even try to be “fair and balanced.” Any democrat who goes on Fox is taking their chances. If you make your point and it is incontrovertible, no problem, they’ll just cut off your mic and shout you down. Markos wasn’t saying good democrats can’t go on Fox; think of it in simpler terms, like if you want to deliver a serious message, the circus is not the appropriate environment.

   Smart, literate and motivated people like Markos drive conservatives nuts. Its easy to see why; they are the future of the party. Markos’ opinions of Harold Ford, who lost his election in large part to conservative dirty tricks, were spot-on. The Democrats tried to play the centrists for far too long, especially in the face of ultra-right-wing conservatives. When Ford was attacked by slimy conservatives using the most base of tactics, he thought that his constituents would see through it for what it was. He was wrong, just as wrong as Democrats have been when faced with similar issues in other campaigns. He didn’t fight back, and instead, now tries to appease conservatives by going on Fox Noise. Its a tactic that has proven wrong time and again, and that is the point that Markos was making.

   Comment by Rocky — August 14, 2007 @ 5:27 pm

2. Having just read your letter, Rocky, I find myself amused that I could have written most of it myself, just changing the names and situations to point out how “evil” the donkeys are! But what I want to do here is challenge your first paragraph.

   To Congress (except MAYBE Minnesota’s delegation) the bridge disaster is pretty much meaningless. How do/will we know this? Because when all the rhetoric has been spun and all the noise been made about who was to blame and how everyone was responsible, Congress will continue to fill bills with spending that has only meaning to the campaign contributors. Meanwhile, our guvmint will continue to rationalize incompetence by designating billions more for infrastructure maintainence and care less about how the money is actually spent.

   Hence, more political payoffs, more bike paths, and more land taken out of the private sector to “preserve” nature while land prices spiral upwards, all in the name of helping nature.

   And no matter who is technically in power, until the thieves of both parties are removed there will continue to be disasters like this. The Katrina disaster wasn’t GW’s fault. It was the fault of decades of misappropriation of funds designated for dike repair. The failed bridge will turn out to be no different, as will the next disaster, too.

   Comment by Carlos — August 16, 2007 @ 7:14 am