Patterico's Pontifications

2/19/2012

New Rule: Sockpuppet Threads to Be Devoid of Commentary on the GOP Primary Race

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:17 am



But don’t panic: I have created a new home for such sockpuppet comments, here.

The text of the new page reads as follows:

The Endless Debate Over Who Is the Best Republican Nominee: Socks Allowed

This is the page where people who want to use sockpuppets to make comments about the Republican primary battle are free to do so.

Want to pose as “Moot Gingrich” or “Mitt ‘You need free abortion’ Romney” or “Governor Rick ‘Two Brain Cells Sparking’ Perry? This is your home.

I am creating this page for two reasons. First, I sense that endless battles over the primary race are ruining the usual sockpuppet threads. Second, I still sense that some longtime readers, for whatever reason, find it useful to use sockpuppets to make their arguments about Mitt Romney and the rest.

So:

You are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply.

Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself.

And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not railing on and on and on about whether Mitt Romney is horrible or good or whatever.

Have fun.

Future editions of the normal sockpuppet threads will include the following sentence in the instructions:

Sockpuppet comments about the Republican primary race are strictly prohibited. If you wish to use sockpuppets for that purpose, confine your comments to this thread. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged.

N.B. Flogging is the floor, not the ceiling, if you get my drift.

42 Responses to “New Rule: Sockpuppet Threads to Be Devoid of Commentary on the GOP Primary Race”

  1. I am Spartucus!”

    Spartacus (2d45ec)

  2. Fantastic idea — the best of both worlds.

    Those who want to make more serious points about the GOP candidates than is usual on a sockpuppet thread can still do it, and the sockpuppet threads will be freer of some of the anger and frustration I’ve seen from commenters who just want to play around on the regular thread.

    Thanks Patterico.

    no one you know (577ce5)

  3. I don’t understand this site’s Sockpuppet Control in the first place. I think socks are hilarious.

    carol (7b33d1)

  4. I was the first commenter in this thread but they moved be back because I didn’t have a reservation. That’s not right.

    Greg Packer (3681c4)

  5. Thank yew, thank yew, thank yew.

    Gomer Pyle (2c3538)

  6. Fundamentally. Moot.

    Moot Gingrich (077b1f)

  7. I’ve never understood what these sockpuppet threads were all about in the first place.

    Michael Hiltzik (f68855)

  8. Once again, there goes Frey, putting his interpretation of what we say rather than what we meant, which is controlling, on sockpuppet threads! How does he know that a comment that was made refers to the Republican primaries; it would well have referred to strength training, but he’d never know.

    Jeff Goldstein (f68855)

  9. These threads are designed to clear the path of “idiots” who don’t have a chance for the “real” candidates. Vote for Rick!

    Rick Perry Supporter (3681c4)

  10. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged.

    Why should they be deleted? They should just be moved. A SYSOP can do that, can’t he?

    Sammy Finkelman (5048f3)

  11. These threads are designed to clear the path of “idiots” who don’t have a chance for the “real” candidates. Vote for Rick!

    Comment by Rick Perry Supporter

    All I saw was a wild eyed Romney defender fail to deflect proven accurate criticism of Romney’s spending and social engineering by showing hostility to Texas’s success story. Seemed quite irrelevant, but there were dozens of attacks on Perry, every one following a criticism of an actual candidate.

    It was almost as stupid as that fella that thought you can’t spend inflation adjusted dollars. He probably went to public school.

    What breaks hearts is that Jon Huntsman is just as electable as Romney, but also is fluent in conservatism and has foreign policy experience and even was a good governor instead of the guy who broke MA. We are headed to a brokered convention. Romney cannot get a majority of delegates. Who are his delegates going to go for? Someone like Jeb Bush or Jon Huntsman. Only we don’t want another Bush.

    Gird your loins.

    hmmm (401f3a)

  12. Why should they be deleted? They should just be moved. A SYSOP can do that, can’t he?

    Our sysop doesn’t have the time. And this is his blog; he gets to make the rules.

    Rick Ellers (e1892b)

  13. I think the rule is fair, and Rick Ellers is right. It’s his blog, his rules, and if we don’t like the rules we can make our own blog with our rules.

    I have no problem trashing Mitt in the correct sockpuppet thread and intend to have fun doing so.

    hmmm (401f3a)

  14. Offending comments will be summarily deleted and the violators flogged.

    Why should they be deleted? They should just be moved. A SYSOP can do that, can’t he?

    Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 2/19/2012 @ 2:02 pm |Edit This

    Even if I knew how, I would not. Incentives.

    Patterico (e49438)

  15. Rick Ellers is a profoundly insightful man. You may quote me on that.

    Glenn Greenwald (e1892b)

  16. I’ve never understood what these sockpuppet threads were all about in the first place.

    Me neither, Mr. Hiltzik. BTW, your columns in the LA Times are absolutely brilliant. Just thought you’d like to know.

    nofanofrepublicans (e1892b)

  17. Indeed he is, Glenn. Almost as insightful as you are.

    His tweets have been read *in the congressional gift store* and he is in one of the most prestigious bowling leagues on the Xbox Live network.

    Wilson (401f3a)

  18. I think Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Hiltzik are great, too. They both deserve humongous raises.

    Mikekoshi (e1892b)

  19. Uh, Valerie, can I borrow $10 and an envelope? I’ll pay the postage myself.

    B. Hussein Obama (e1892b)

  20. But but but, am I allow to use the term Crustilla Gingrich?? I love the sound of it.

    Gym Hoft (694db4)

  21. Can we talk about the aspirin between the knees joke some more? Although I’m a little dizzy from shaking my head repeatedly, beating this horse until it’s head.

    Andrea (I Married for Money but Obama's My Soulmate) Mitchell (e1d89d)

  22. I heard that!

    Alan Greenspan (e1d89d)

  23. So where do y’all want me to post===here?….

    Oops.

    Rick Perry (9d1bb3)

  24. I make turkey delicious.

    Turkey Brine (3681c4)

  25. N.B. Flogging is the floor, not the ceiling, if you get my drift.

    Well I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly turned on!

    A. "Sweaty Glutes" Sullivan (f1c59f)

  26. Why should they be deleted? They should just be moved. A SYSOP can do that, can’t he?
    Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 2/19/2012 @ 2:02 pm

    No, the software doesn’t support that. Comments can be moderated, deleted, trashed (same as deleted except they can be retrieved later), or marked as spam and sent to the spam bin. No option to move.

    Stashiu3 (601b7d)

  27. This thread is begging for a Ross Perot sock… Begging!!

    Kaisersoze (298188)

  28. Been there, done that. Click the link, it’s safe and it assonates (or does it).

    https://patterico.com/2012/02/18/sockpuppet-saturday-pole-tax-edition/#comment-918186

    nk (5a9989)

  29. Stupid program will take you to the right page but my Ross Perot comment is about 10 comments back. Scroll back. IFYKWIMAITYD.

    nk (5a9989)

  30. Does the spam filter allow words like assonates? Should I have written buttonates instead.

    And mostly Patterico I know you like commas but sentence structure can make them just one more straw to carpal tunnel syndrome.

    nk (5a9989)

  31. Need to imply …the camel of …. I like elipses.

    nk (5a9989)

  32. I never really talked about this before, but part of my theory of effective writing is liberal use of dashes, commas, and ellipses.

    I hear the sentence in my head the way it would sound if it were read aloud. Then I choose the appropriate combination of weapons from the aforementioned arsenal, so that the sentence as it appears on the page resembles the pacing I hear in my head — and I find that doing it this way makes the writing seem to flow in a powerful and convincing fashion.

    Patterico (02a608)

  33. Your musical training likely helps, as well, or even strongly, because meter is a very powerful tool in being heard. Cf. Shakespeare.

    It’s hard to say, I just let it all flow out, when I can I rewrite it three times, and hope that it’s more than just me being enchanted with my own words.

    In speaking, I never read, not even an outline. I certainly think about it in advance, but in executing it it’s skeleton memory and flesh extempore.

    nk (5a9989)

  34. Ok, fine. But keep out that annoying guy that just screams “AHHH! AHHH! AHHH!” all the time.

    mojo (4a9666)

  35. Okay, I think I (well not really “I”) got another one. =]

    CrypticTweets (3681c4)

  36. “Newt Gingrich… ‘Moon President.'” Funny stuff.

    And thanks to SNL– as well as most of the 40-somethings playing pundits and journalists rooted across the media landscape chuckling right along– a go-to punch line forever. Half a century ago, comedians Bill Dana, aka ‘Jose Jimenez,’ Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks cracked wise about ‘astro-nuts’ and “space monkeys,” too. Funny stuff.

    But fifty years ago today, February 20, 1962, nobody was laughing much as dawn broke over Cape Canaveral– or in tens of millions of American homes, offices, coffee shops or any place that had a radio or television set switched on. Much of the United States had paused, tuned-in and was listening and watching, live, as their nation was about to attempt, after weeks of repeated technical and weather delays, to put its first man into orbit around the Earth, the then 40 year old astronaut, John Glenn.

    Those alive at the time may have some fragment of memory of that day as much of the Western world was focused on events transpiring down at the Cape and up in space. But the intense pressure to succeed in the context of those times has dimmed over the decades. The Cold War was near its chilliest point and it’s difficult to convey these days how much was really riding along with Glenn besides national prestige in those days.

    The Russians had already done it. Twice. Gagarin and Titov. In its first three years, NASA had tried to put 28 satellites into orbit. Only 8 succeeded. Flight Director Chris Kraft noted in his memoirs that missile systems in that period had roughly a 60% success rate. Two of the five Mercury-Atlas test flights experienced mishaps and as Gene Kranz, then a young flight controller, has said, Glenn’s MA-6 was either going to be the fourth success or the third failure. That was the state of the technology in that era– and those were the calculated risks facing Glenn, his country and the credibility of the politics, the ideologies, the managers, educators and industries in the ‘free world’ that created, designed and built his spacecraft, his launch vehicle and its support systems network.

    The facts and figures surrounding Glenn’s three orbit, 81,000 mile flight aboard Friendship 7 are easy to look up. It was all over in about five hours; an errant signal falsely indicated a loose heat shield; the capsule, primitive by today’s standards and not much bigger than a phone booth, had no on-board computer; after Glenn was recovered from his Atlantic splashdown, the post office issued a ‘Project Mercury’ first class mail stamp– 4 cents– and today the heat-scarred Friendship 7 is displayed in the foyer of the National Air & Space Museum in Washington. The lights of Perth, Rockingham and mysterious ‘fireflies’ are footnotes as well. Before the flight, Glenn stopped by a Cocoa Beach drug store and bought a small, 35mm camera to take photos from orbit out his small window. Nobody had thought of it. It was the flight fellow Mercury astronaut, Scott Carpenter, prayerfully urged at liftoff, “Godspeed, John Glenn,” and Walter Cronkite famously cheered, Oh, go baby, go!” to his TV audience as the Atlas launch vehicle, a modified ICBM originally built to carry nuclear warheads, disappeared into the Florida sky.

    Framed on the wall here is a front page of the New York Times from February 21, 1962 headlined with news about Glenn’s successful flight. There was other front page news that day, of course. Nelson Rockefeller opposed NY state bonuses to Korean War vets; Robert MacNamara reported gains by the Vietnamese over Communist insurgents; Adenauer urged a meeting of the ‘big four’ foreign ministers in Berlin to ease tensions and good news for commuters, the NJ bus strike ended. Assassinations, the expanded Vietnam war and much of the turmoil of the 1960’s lay years ahead.

    By today’s standards, three orbits isn’t much. But in early 1962, Glenn’s success was a reaffirmation of everything America stood for in the world at that time on the other battle fronts of the Cold War– and a confidence-building validation for the people who made it happen both in government and in private industry. For space officials at the time, it benchmarked ‘the end of the beginning’ of the “early days” of human spaceflight by the United States.

    In a statement that afternoon, President Kennedy noted, “We have a long way to go in the space race. We started late. But this is the new ocean, and I believe the United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.”

    Of course comedians today could quip if a position ‘second to none’ was first tried on all interns at a White House pool party. Might make a good skit on SNL. And the 40-somethings playing pundits and journalists rooted across the media landscape would chuckle right along.

    “JFK…’Moon President.'” Yep. Funny stuff.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  37. The Right Stuff and too a lesser Michener’s space captured the ethos, a lot of it had to with the launch vehicles involved, one of which was the cousin to the ones who would be deployed in Cuba,
    that same fall, and the Atlas was cousin to the Jupiters in Turkey, that supposedly provoked the
    mess, In the big match Von Braun, beat out Korolev’s team, on the way to the moon, yet in the big picture, thanks to the likes of Mondale among
    others, we dropped the ball,

    narciso (87e966)

  38. OT, but my take on the R.S. McCain dustup and apology.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  39. Women have a constitutional right to be given free birth control. Therefore we have issued a new order requiring priests to personally deliver free condoms to the women who request them. Why not? This ensures that women will have access to the medical services they need.

    We’ll delay the order for a week for the sake of conscience.

    His Excellency the Potus (e01538)

  40. Love me some Mittens!
    Romney 2012!

    Retired05 (4cf53e)


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