{"id":12993,"date":"2010-08-30T05:19:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T10:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12993"},"modified":"2010-08-29T17:45:39","modified_gmt":"2010-08-29T22:45:39","slug":"damning-with-faint-praise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12993","title":{"rendered":"Damning With Faint Praise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/gatewaypundit.firstthings.com\/2010\/08\/american-socialists-release-names-of-70-congressional-democrats-in-their-caucus\/\">knocking around the blogosphere<\/a>: \u00a0The &#8220;Socialist Party of America&#8221; had named seventy &#8220;socialist&#8221; US Senators and Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>The problem?:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;\"><em><span><strong>Quote:<\/strong><\/span> The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The problem here is the Socialist Party of America does not exist.<\/p>\n<p>The second problem is the newsletter of question\/statement also does not exist. Here is the DSA newsletter for the\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #9c2c2c;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dsausa.org\/dl\/Fall_2009.pdf\">Fall of 2009<\/a> and here is the\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #9c2c2c;\" href=\"http:\/\/socialistparty-usa.org\/socialist\/\">SP-USA&#8217;s newsletter<\/a> which never published an October 2009 edition.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #9c2c2c;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.americansocialists.net\/\">American Socialist Party<\/a> is not the\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #9c2c2c;\" href=\"http:\/\/socialistparty-usa.org\/\">Socialist Party USA <\/a>and the\u00a0<a style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #9c2c2c;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Socialist_Party_of_America\">Socialist Party of America<\/a> has not existed since 1973 after it had a three way split.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On the one hand, if there&#8217;s anything more tedious than listening to Libertarians describe all the different flavors in their own party, it&#8217;s listening to socialists talk about the various internecine splits, gyrations and flips they&#8217;ve gone through. \u00a0I start reading it, and start to picture&#8230;:<br \/>\n<object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gb_qHP7VaZE?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gb_qHP7VaZE?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Apparently the &#8220;SPoA&#8221; is really just a list of the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.afterdowningstreet.org\/pc\">Congressional Progressive Caucus<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>Tomayto, Tomahto, really, but accuracy counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word&#8217;s been knocking around the blogosphere: \u00a0The &#8220;Socialist Party of America&#8221; had named seventy &#8220;socialist&#8221; US Senators and Representatives. The problem?: Quote: The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus. The problem here is the Socialist Party of America does not exist. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12993"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12998,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12993\/revisions\/12998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}