Huh - seeing the interaction between Paul and the rest of the wingers here was the only thing that made coming back here and reading interesting.

The thread wasn't out of bounds, considering that you think its fine that Hinkrocket calls all Democrats "betrayers of america".

Whatever man. Enjoy the echo chamber.

JC, P. Lukasiak wasn't banned from the site for content. He was banned for explicitly disobeying a moderator's official request.

Our comments policy gives our team members the right to request that people exit a thread, or indeed all of an author's future posts. This gives us options below a site-wide ban, and commenters like Raymond for instance have been hit with those and obeyed. Which is why Raymond is still here, though he'll be the first to admit that he's #1 in deleted comments.

BTW, right-wing commenter Chuck Pelto met a similar fate way back in one of A.L.'s threads. For the same reason, except his comments were far less inflammatory. But A.L. made a request, and Chuck wouldn't follow it, and that was the end of him.

Our standards haven't changed - except in one respect, and that's the fact that I will now add insult to injury and publicly rip those who mess with my team. It ups the deterrent value, and makes an example of them that others will more easily remember.

Your standards have changed, however, if that's what drew you back here.

It was entertaining to a point, and admittedly, Lukasiak's views were educational in terms of representing a certain segment of the left. An Open Thread Steel Cage Match with P.L. and Raymond, no outside comments, resolution to be mutually agreed... would have been interesting, and was in the early planning stages.

But there are certain things one can't put up with, and direct disobedience of official requests is one of them. Unlike the W.W.E., there are consequences for that here.

Mess with my team, and nothing will save you.

Gotta be that way, as Winds grows and the burden of keeping our comments section worth anything falls more and more heavily on their shoulders.

Leaving to me to answer the question, "why did I ask pl to leave?" And so for the record I'd offer this account.

#2 was OK. Wrong, if he'd managed to stay civil long enough to receive a reply, but OK.

#3 I felt was intentionally and personally insulting. At that point I didn't feel obliged debate. I didn't have to take it that way, maybe on a different day I wouldn't have. But I did, and I felt, and still feel, within my rights to tell pl to buzz off.

#24 removed any doubts as to the personal nature of the insult. I take exception to being labeled "one of the most vicious hatemongers around". Again I told him to buzz off. Again he ignored me.

It's arguable that I should have blown off the insult and engaged him anyway. I'm simply saying that I'm not required to, it's my prerogative to set a threshold, and my threshold was exceeded.

I'm sorry he didn't listen and lay off when I told him to.

Free guest blog slot to anyone who can beat the above rap and all other commenter raps.

Unfortunately I don't know rap from transmission damage, but here's a song I wrote last year which I dedicate to P.L's memory:

IT'S MICROSOFT WORD AND WE KNOW IT
[To the tune of It's the End of the World as We Know It by REM]

That's great, it starts with a line break
Superscript, not monospaced,
The blogosphere is not impressed.
Ivan the Hurricane, flatten coast all in vain
Rather-blather windspeeds easily exceed thee
Rather-blather windspeeds must serve Kerry's needs

“Bush sucks, signed God”, space, enter, space.
One sec, spell check … Fine? Fine.
Uh, oh, where’d it go? Must view printer queue – There it is, whew.

It's Microsoft Word and we know it
It's Microsoft Word and we know it
It's Microsoft Word and we know it, and Dan is lying.

Lewy14 was entirely right to draw the line at personal abuse.

And I'll accept the submission from Glen, since it fits the spirit of the moment. He is now the one to beat.

I'll echo what Joe and Lewy14 said.

In general, I have a pretty tolerant opinion of even some of the more inflammatory remarks around here (perhaps because I get so much hate mail) ... so long as they contribute to the dialogue. As a result, I thought I was more than fair to listen and even attempt to engage Lukasiak in a variety of threads and even did so even after he implied that I personally more or less supported (or at least would support) the Holocaust. If he was going for argumentum ad absurdium, the general hysterical and over-the-top nature of his tone didn't exactly make that clear to me or the other folks in the thread.

The way I see it, and I think I articulated this to Joe in an e-mail about a week ago, is that you can think of this blog as a restaurant. We really don't give a damn what you order or talk about over dinner, but if you start throwing things at the waiters, threatening the chef, and so on we are well within our rights to show you the door. And while I thought that Lukasiak was able to make good points on occasion, his hysterical and over-the-top reactions to anyone who dared to question him didn't exactly add to a productive conversation. This led me to the conclusion pretty early on that he was spoiling for a fight so he could demonstrate his presumed intellectual superiority to us dumb right-wingers. Well if that was indeed his goal, congradulations, he got his fight.

He lost.

JC: "Enjoy the echo chamber."

Come on, JC. I don't think you read the threads from the past several days carefully. If that stuff was meaningful dialogue, then the war of words is over. And where would we be without our war, JC?

We'd all be on FOX television, doing voice-overs on footage of Michael Jackson walking back and forth from his damn limousine. "Today Michael Jackson was wearing pants," we'd say.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather be dead.

Thank you.

Yup, first post of mine that got wacked i said wack away.

Frankly those that got wacked was not very good, and probably saved me from embarrasment.

Its not good form to drop your ashes on the floor, and tell the owner "its good for the rug"

Im really enjoying myself, its so worth following a few rules. all they ask is not to dump your drinks in the couch and the guests, and dont pit out yo coals on my flo, or else it will be like the Eddie Murfy party scene, in the movie trading places, "Get the **** Out!"

Thanks for the reasoned explanation, all. As noted, I sometimes am on the side of pl, sometimes think he needs to step back and listen, and sometimes have found that I would like to work with his words and make them better suit the occasion. Particular appreciation goes to jinnderella, who took on the role of conciliator and seemed to be having some success at it.

Like Glen, can't do rap - and thanks for the little hymn, with appropriate "selahs" (which are directions to a chorus or choir).

Personal attacks seemed to becoming pl's direction, can't pretend to understand why when issues are so much more compelling, and his intellect seemed better suited to them. Speculate that a feeling of powerlessness was undermining his own better judgment - and blames higher powers here personified by Lewy14. (Sun King).

Beautiful quote to end off: Anne Armstrong in "Spiral Staircase"? "We must make room in our minds for one another."

Something I will be practicing for so long as I remember to.

Peaceful Passover.

I saw this one coming. It's a shame when CSDR takes hold of people who seem to be reasonably intelligent. A little snark here and there is to be expected when debates get a bit heated, but when someone is constantly falling back on ad-hom and ridiculous accusations it tends to swamp whatever point they might actually have and degrade the overall quality of discussion. Joe made the right choice.

Hey, p.,
my homeslice lewy say you not cool
you loced an' looney, an' you a fool
Da' blogfather back
an' you gets da smack

Winds is where da cool whiggas be slangin'
But it ain't no mo' where you be hanging!
;D

Dan

"This led me to the conclusion pretty early on that he was spoiling for a fight so he could demonstrate his presumed intellectual superiority to us dumb right-wingers."

It didn't take long for me to get that impression. I was also toying with the idea that PL's ulterior motive was to discredit, debase and disgrace WoC to the point that it's staff and members would no longer be regarded with esteem in the realm of public debate. Robin Burk as well as others at WoC have made incredible inroads into the MSM and it would be most unfortunate if that voice is lost.

An Open Thread Steel Cage Match with P.L. and Raymond

JC, just because a rude and disruptive person has a different point of view - one he defends with vitriol not argument - is no reason to keep him around.

Jib-Jab has a Founding Fathers rap item on the main site that's a lot of fun. Hover/click on each figure to get his take/give on wassup!

"I was also toying with the idea that PL's ulterior motive was to discredit, debase and disgrace WoC to the point that it's staff and members would no longer be regarded with esteem in the realm of public debate."

Could be, he had the agent provocateurish habit of making claims that were absurd on their face.

Another possibility is that he was, like a lot of folks, inexperienced in engaging with folks who are actually willing to disagree with him intelligently. The current academic atmosphere is conducive to such inexperience.

Perhaps the role of the blogosphere is to provide remedial debate practice to make up for our deficient schools. Even p.luk seemed to be catching a clue or two there at the end.

JC, two things came to mind when I read your comment.

First, please don't assume - or infer - that somehow Powerline's tone and political stance is tied to that of Winds of Change. If you haven't figured out the difference, I'd encourage you to look a little more carefully. Among other differences, there is a range of team opinion on this site and we encourage healthy discussion from a variety of points of view.

Second, that's healthy discussion. I.e. discussion that is respectful even when it's vigorous. I've warned a few commenters and dumped comments when abusive language persisted, not to censor the ideas but because personal abuse degrades the site and makes it impossible to serve the role intended here.

Joe has worked hard for a good while to create a community of dialogue here. You and others are invited to participate. We just ask that you not ruin it for its intended purpose.

Ged, I've had some fruitful exchanges with Paul via private email. He has some interesting observations to make on several topics I care about. But it does seem to me that he has a habit of moving to extreme, aggressive and ad hominem rhetoric against any person or idea with which he disagrees.

There are sites where that is part of the community norm. But not here at WoC, and not at some other places I've seen him do the same, such as Jay Rosen's PressThink.

Robin, re: your #18, the hard work of Joe, Marc, yourself and your peers here in building community cannot be praised highly enough.

Anyone who consistently abandons reason in favor of emotionally based logically fallacious attacks, is not here to advance the general knowledge. They have other reasons for dropping by. Their goal is probably to disrupt and destroy.
It's your house and you get to decide who stays and who goes. That should be understood.

Levy can dish it out, but just can't take it! If anyone needed an object lesson in why the MSM will never be supplanted by the blogosphere, look no further than Levy’s self-serving rationalizations and the good-old-boy mentality of the WoC in protecting (rather than correcting) his mistake. Dan Rather had the bloggers. Who holds Levy accountable when he screws up as he has so colossally in the “PL Affair”?

You could just send yourself email and congratulate yourself on the poignancy of your word choices and the scrupulously camouflaged logical fallacies of your rhetoric. Save the trouble of reading frequently legitimate points phrased in the most annoying way possible. To repeat myself, if you need proof for why the MSM will thrive in a backlash against blogs, look no further than the self-absorbed and self-serving commentary here.

I'm going to delete this site from my Favorites list after this post. Those footsteps you hear heading for the exits are from people who are "on the bubble" looking to HEAR the defense of the rightist point of view, not take it for granted.

Out…

It's Lewy, not Levy.

You want to put any substance behind your accusations?

Lewy, wasn't the florid verbiage enough?

Dissenting views can be expressed without calling the team members names like "blogwhore for neo-fascism" or "vicious hatemonger[]." Name-calling isn't a point-of-view.

Patrick

fine with the banning, but please stop rapping.

thanks

Who won?

jinnderella

In a matter of vindictive behavior there is little if nothing to be gained on either side. The battle is lost before it even begins. On the other hand if you're asking for pro's and con's I can certainly tally those if you like.

USMC, ummm, i meant the best rap.

David,

This is not a public space, this is a private space, and if you cannot act in a civil manner here then you are trespassing and shall be escorted out.

If you won't show the people here some elementary courtesy then I think you should find another venue to vent in.

they'd rather not draw the .44 Magnum in their cyber-holsters

Joe! Real ganstas carry glockes. ;)

In order...

David Van Wie (#22), don't let the door hit you on the way out. We've watched the comments sections of large blogs left and right spiral into sewers - and we do not intend to share their fate. As I told P.L., we have room here for a wide range of views, passionately argued... but a much narrower range of behaviours, which we will enforce. Alan Kellogg (#30) gets that, as do most of our readers. Those who have a problem with the concept... aren't the sort of people we want here.

You know, while I was in California I had a nice chat with a gentleman who works as a bouncer in a biker bar. The gang bikers, he said, were no problem. The @$$%*les who walk in and want to show the whole bar how tough they are, on the other hand, are the source of the vast majority of the staff's workload - and a similar share of the injury/fatality statistics.

I leave the blogosphere application of this principle to the reader.

Praktike (#26) while the recent EU offer of an all expense paid trip to The Hague and possible extended engagement was enticing, you'll be pleased to know that I think I'll give up the rapping for a while.

Jinnderella (#29): currently, Glen Wishard retains the lead. Commendable attempt, though. As for armament (#31), real ganstas may carry Glocks, but I'll take Dirty Harry any day. Besides, it's a more appropriate weapon for a Marshal - and we're about to deputize a couple.

currently, Glen Wishard retains the lead.

well, i cannot beat Glen. So i gracefully accept defeat.

I'll take Dirty Harry any day

Personally i prefer my ruger semi-automatic. I can lay down a sixteen pattern and slam in a preloaded clip in a heartbeat. ;)

Ahem,

Now, come to da house
If you want to do the talk thing,
But keep it real all da time
Or you gonna go walking
Off of da end o da pier,
Yeah I’m talking da short side
And there ain’t gonna be
Nowhere here dat you can hide

Cuz we got da leftys, da rightys
And everyone in between
Saying things that they feel
Or about what they seen
Disagree if you want
Dats what debates all about
But if you go and get fresh
Dey ain’t gonna shout

No, dey ain’t gonna cry
Da Man ain’t in to dat
No, da Man just gonna look
At what you said and if that
Ain’t no good, crosses da line
Goes too far, spoil da fun
Den dat’s it for yo’ ass
p. lukasiak -- you done

-Boo

There's plenty of room for dissent here--Andrew J. Lazarus has been hanging around for years, and praktike not quite as long. You just have to avoid calling someone like me "homophobic scum" when we point out that it's better to be gay in 2005 than black in 1955 and that thus the civil-rights-movement/gay-marriage analogy may fail.

That's not a particularly high bar--one that pretty much everyone clears in face-to-face conversation--but P.luk couldn't clear it here. Good riddance.

I'm with Prak on this...

Rapping well is, like cowboy poetry, not for everyone. Joe, I'm sad to tell you that, but I'd keep the day job.

A.L.

"David van Wie (#22) wrote:"http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006718.php#c22

if you need proof for why the MSM will thrive in a backlash against blogs, look no further than the self-absorbed and self-serving commentary here.

I'm going to delete this site from my Favorites list after this post. Those footsteps you hear heading for the exits are from people who are "on the bubble" looking to HEAR the defense of the rightist point of view, not take it for granted.

Out...

David,

I hope you reconsider. Googling your name brings up the c.v. of an accomplished environmentalist/consultant--the sort of person likely to have insightful thoughts to offer on a range of subjects covered at WoC. And from a liberal-left perspective? So much the better!

I think you, along with many others, start with misconceptions about what the "problem space" is. This is a general point about web-logs that has application for the particular case of p. lukasiak's comments at Winds of Change.

“The Blogosphere” isn't what it seems, or what The New York Times or The Minneapolis Star-Tribune says it is. The Web-log concept boils down to cheaper printing presses. What do The L.A. Times, Granta, The New Republic, The Nation, The National Review, and The National Enquirer have in common? Each is a venture that racks up millions of dollars of expenses to generate offset type—and thus has to generate millions in income.

Joe Katzman started Winds of Change because he was a baseball fan, liked thinking about geo-politics, and enjoyed putting his writing up for others to read. He could translate this whim into a "publication" because the barriers-to-entry to virtual-printing-press ownership are now a late-model computer, an internet connection, and a few hundred bucks.

Oh, and one other thing: readers. Winds of Change is a success—to the extent it is a success—because people decide to visit this URL, see what’s new, point-and-click, and occasionally, perhaps, comment.

It also succeeds to the extent that it makes its proprietor happy, ‘cuz (unlike Rupert Murdoch or Tina Brown) Joe isn’t getting rich from this venture.

Is the Letters Editor of the The Towson Times obligated to print my submissions? Even if she worries that my intemperate, lengthy, sometimes-vicious … and occasionally insightful … screeds might drive away the sort of thoughtful reader and contributor to the Op-Ed page that she covets? Of course she isn't (and hasn't).

And, arguably, I have a stronger claim on The Towson Times’ column-inches than p. lukasiak does on WoC’s URL.

• First, I clam up on my bad days. Take a look at the sorts of ad hominems that spewed from p.l.’s keyboard when he was cross (scan the comments).

• Second, I can’t up and start a newspaper tomorrow—-I don’t have the scratch, or the silver tongue to woo investors. But p.l. can head over to Google, and start his own blog within the hour. No readership, you say? Well for starters, he can email me, and I’ll give it a plug here; for the rest, he’s on his own.

readership, you say… Hmmm, with his name on the masthead, that'll mean he has to worry about attracting and holding readers… Coming up with posts that inspire the sorts of comments that make the proprietor glad to be blogging… Generating free and frank exchange of ideas… Navigating the shoals of troll-fests, flame wars, me-too!!!! dittoheads, and stream-of-consciousness irrelevance…

…Bringing me to the end of my definition of the problem space. I hope it helped.

Did anyone but me notice that P. tended to come off as relatively reasonable when he commented on environmental issues. I didn't agree with some of what he said. And since I'm no expert on such matters, everything he said may have been BS as far as I know (though I doubt it) but he usually seemed to argue about the topic and not the commenters. I suspect that may be because that's the subject on which he was best informed. As someone who studied and taught rhetoric for 20+ years, I could have told him that when your style of argument alternates between arrogant, dismissive ad hominems and prissy, self-righteous hissy fits you create the impression (accurate or not) that your covering for the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. Jettisoning him was probably a good idea, but I have to admit he brought a WWF quality to the comments that some dark corner of my soul found entertaining.

Hi Boo-Pear!!
LMAO!!!! Oh, that is very, very habinar. ;)

AMac's points are well taken.

BooPear moves into the lead slot.

Armed,

Rapping well is, like cowboy poetry, not for everyone.

Or emo?

;D

It ain't rap!

profound ideas
debate with words
open minds thirst
talk to not at
talk with not beyond

obscured voices
defile debase dehumanize
hateful words
uncivil discourse
isolated cell

impaired ears
raucous blatherings
pacifiers for kids
alienation
agonizing silence

contempt
the empty room
deaf echoes await

USMC

jinn, thanks for the props!

We're all standing on the shoulders of giants in some way, I think. Clearly the magic, the wonder and downright jiggyness (is it still hep to say jiggy? Is it still hep to say hep?) of the rap luminaries who have come before me has rubbed off, somewhat. ;)

USMC, I bow to your more gracious use of words.

-Boo

Hmm, beat poetry now. I'll defer to BooPear here, and put USMC up to #1.

USMC, homes! you be slangin' !!

Wow, i am just astonished at all the raw talent here! ;)

BooPear
Thanks for the compliment.

jinn
Yes I can slang with the best of them. I can still see Mrs. Wheat turning white when I walked into English class and asked - Ain't we gonna learn no English today? That comment cost the class in spades. Memorize Shakespeare was the punishment. Of course it was funny when I quoted multiple lines of many passages not completing the passage in total. Ahh - at one time school was fun! We even learned a few things along the way.

Joe
Don't change the rules on my account and thanks for the vote of confidence. As I wrote it ain't rap.

Geez, jinn, you have a long memory, don't you!!

...<g>

A.L.

Armed, only for emo-fans. ;)

Next time, I think we should go for haiku. Everybody loves a good haiku. Free form or traditional, either way.

-Boo

It ain't rap!

Fingers {snap} {snap} {snap}

Patrick

I think hot heads (like me sometimes) need about 10 years of flame wars on usenet to get a majority of crap out of the system.

I have the advantage of actually being involved in FIDO net since the earliest days (when was that '82? '85? - I forget).

Got most of the crap out of my system.

Trading insults is fun.

Trading ideas is better.

Too much belief.

Not enough doubt.

The left runs on belief almost totally.

The right runs on belief and reason.

I thought that the right got totally unreasonable on the Terri S. case. Would not reason. Would not accept correction of erronius facts.

Neither side is immune but in general the right gets the better of the arguments.

Doubt is your friend. Belief is a ho.

Aliester Crowley had some very nice things to say about doubt.

The truth is a harsh mistress.

Well, just for the record I've been banned from commenting on a supposedly "anything goes" forum, with a left-leaning moderator, for simply insisting that the left was largely wrong about Iraq and democratization. I just thought it'd be healthy for them to admit it, punt, and try a different strategy.

They tolerated me for years pointing out weaknesses in their arguments and observing that there really was a chance that the "our vanguard vs their vanguard" strategy would work. Fine, there was no proof so say anything you like, I guess.

But once there was some evidence, I could no longer be tolerated.

And this intolerance, founded on the sinking feeling that the evidence is about to spring the trap door on all the hopes and dreams of "Bush defeat" in Iraq, is what really lies behind the personal attacks launched at people on this site, and others (the Jawa Report).

Anyway, I'd sure love to see someone on this site address the Jean R. Cobbs issue if you can snatch a moment or two. I mean, I know it's not foreign policy or anything, but she sure got the left's goat, and they sure made her pay for it, so perhaps it's not completely irrelevant. "Academic freedom," and all that.

Thoughts?

Doubt all things. Hold fast to that which is true.