Ben Domenech, Meet Your Dad

Truly the gift that keeps on giving. Yet more on the Washington Post's sekrit plan to discredit the right by giving airtime to Ben Domenech.

Over at RedState.org, the Washington Post's Ben Domenech writes that Jack Abramoff had no influence on policy at the Interior Department:

Comments || Norton Resigns from Cabinet || RedState: Oh please. By: Augustine. That's bullcrap. Abramoff boasted of being an insider at EVERY agency, not just Interior. Because he lied to his clients, we're supposed to believe that he actually had any effect on policy? Please.

Ben, there's somebody we want you to meet. You can call him "Dad":

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: March 19, 2006 - March 25, 2006 Archives: Little did I know this Ben Domenech gambit from the Post was a secret plot to create the grist for more Abramoff blogging. You see, it turns out the Domenech family came in for a number of Bush administration appointments. Not only Ben, but Ben's dad, Doug, who was White House liaison to the Department of Interior. Or to put it more colloquially, White House guy to make sure Jack Abramoff got what he wanted with the Indians and the Pacific Island stuff.

Wayne Smith was the point man for Indian casino policy at the Department of Interior. He ended up having kind of a rough ride over at Interior. And, according to Smith, as reported last year in the Denver Post, Domenech told him "we had to pay attention to [Jack] Abramoff, because otherwise the religious right and (Ralph) Reed are going to come up and bite us, and our whole base will go crazy. They will light up our phones, shut down our phone lines."

According to Smith, Domenech was the conduit for Abramoff operative Italia Federici. Said Smith: "Doug would come down and say, 'Italia called and Jack wants this' That's how it all happened internally."

Perhaps it's from first-hand family experience that Ben writes:

Red America: On the size of government, on immigration and on issues of federal power, Republicans have adopted the same Washington strategies.... They've grown fat and happy on pork contracts, and forgotten why they were sent to this town in the first place.

Comments

[Tyrone Slothrop]

How do you know that "Augustine" is Ben Domenech?

[Jim Dandy]

I agree wholeheartedly with the general critique of Domenech and WaPo expressed here and below.

But I think it misses an important point: that his appointment as WaPo blogger is part of a desperate commercial strategy on the part of WaPo to recover from its ongoing losses in some other areas of operation by going for the lowest common denominator in its online operations.

On the print side, a similar strategy was to try to offset declining sales of the regular daily edition by joining the rush to free tabloid dailies with their own “Express”, which has failed to stand up to the vigorous competition in the DC metro area.

The interesting thing is that Domenech expresses, in his self-justification of his own position as representing a majoritarian one (“twice as many Americans believe in creationism as in evolution;” conservatives are the majority of the public; etc.), exactly the logic of the WaPo’s commercial strategy in going after this market segment in the blogosphere.

In this respect, they are evidently prepared to sacrifice whatever reputation they may have acquired in the past as a respected and reliable source of news and informed discourse for the benefit of the bottom line – a strategy of product dilution that is bound to backfire.

[buce]

Re Ben as Augustine, see:

http://yourlogohere.blogspot.com/2006/03/run-stephen-run-ben-it-is-you-via.html

[Scott W. Somerville]

I've known Ben since he and my oldest son were best friends fourteen years ago. He's a great kid (grown up now, I guess) and I'm rooting for him!

[John]

You're not looking at the Post motives the right way. Why would they be attempting to discredit the right? No, this move is all about discrediting the entire blogosphere. After the Abramoff/Howell fiasco, they want to look for ways to demonstrate the unhinged nature of bloggers. What better way than to get their own unhinged blogger, so that they can hold him up as an example of how many loose cannons are out there?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"He's a great kid (grown up now, I guess) and I'm rooting for him!"

Are you reading what he writes, too, or would that ruin the fun?

[kharris]

Makes sense to look at the Post's motives, but in the end, the conversation is separate from the sponsor. This low-brow has been given a voice, and he is using it. Why the Post let's him is another matter. If the Post has any motive other than a) staying alive or b) maintaining its reputation (subcomponent of staying alive), this is wasted effort. The Post is too small to change the worl'd impression of the relative importance of web vs paper.

[dubblblind]

So what is going on at the Post? Simple, the midterms are looming and the Rethugs have nothing of substance to run on (what a surprise!) so it's time for the Post to do it's part to help mobilize the base. But now the base has withered to only the dumbest and most ignorant (excepting, of course, the richest and most corrupt). Enter Ben Domenech!

[ogmb]

> They've grown fat and happy on pork contracts, and forgotten why they were sent to this town in the first place.

Who would've thought I might actually agree with those morons? Whatever merits the "Reagan Revolution" might've had in the 1980's it's gone deep into Animal Farm territory now.

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

[Lee A. Arnold]

Washpigtin Pokst Promotes Lamarckian Theory (headline)

[John Emerson]

A pretty face, glibness, orthodoxy and connections. IIRC, that's how they staffed the Iraq reconstruction team too.

[ogmb]

> Congratulations, Brad! You're officially obsessed now.

What'd you expect? Wingnut moron train wrecks are fascinating to watch.

[RKKA]

Congratulations Josh Trevino! You've just confirmed that Prof. DeLong is hitting a sore spot with you! Hope he does it more...

[masaccio]

What kind of blog doesn't have comments? Cowards.

[christofay]

Are we still in the era when the wing-nuts can make stuff up as Ben did by stating 2/3s of Americans give greater belief in creationism than evolution?

"Huge crowds extend Darwin exhibit in New York"

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2627&ncid=2627&e=8&u=/afp/20060322/sc_afp/useducationevolution_060322193340

"Wed Mar 22, 2:54 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - A monumental Charles Darwin exhibition in New York has been extended by five months amid an overwhelming public response to what was touted as a scholarly rebuke to opponents of teaching evolution in US schools.

The American Museum of Natural History said Wednesday that nearly 200,000 people had visited "Darwin" since it opened three months ago."

Well, it's the Northeast. Fact. (Said in an Inspector Clouseau voice from 'A Shot in the Dark,' Clouseau is French) There is no God there. Pat Robinson said so. Those 200,000 people are the only ones who saw it. About 299,800,000 Americans showed their support for creationism by not visiting the Darwin show.

[Doctor Memory]

Josh "Tacitus" Trevino, who appears to be following every single trackback of every single Domenech story on the web in the last 2 days, is accusing BRAD of being obsessed?

Okay, what the heck is up with Tacky? Lord knows he's never deserved the mantle of "reasonableness" that the left blogosphere has often assigned him, but he's usually capable of at least pretending not to be a hit-and-run troll. Did he go off his meds? Are the Domeneches family friends? Was he expecting to get the WaPo gig himself and is engaging in some weird anger sublimination ritual? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Down and Out in Sài Gòn]

This is an actual blog post by "Augustine", who we know as Ben.

http://www.redstate.com/story/2005/9/30/123649/894

Choice quotes:

"People who are poor and black are a drag on society. We would all be better off if there were fewer of them. Since we have, with little success, spent trillions of dollars over the past several decades trying to make poor blacks non-poor, it is time we recognize that there are more efficient means of eliminating the drag. Stated so bluntly, many readers might find that way of putting the matter morally problematic. The extermination of anti-social elements does, after all, have a somewhat controversial history. One thinks, perhaps inevitably, of the Holocaust, but it did not start or stop there.
... Levitt, like Donohue, is also careful to say that he is not a supporter of the unlimited abortion license. I notice that many other commentators make a point of saying that this discussion is not about the rightness or wrongness of abortion. It just happens that killing black babies has the happy result of reducing crime. I do not question the research or logic of Levitt's argument. If a specifiable group is inordinately responsible for a social problem, it follows that eliminating a large number of people belonging to that group will reduce the problem."

He did not write these words. He only copy and pasted them... without commentary. To quote "RedDan" on the following comment thread at Steve Gilliards's place:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/stevenewsblog/114309253372137263/

"Let's be clear at the outset: Domenech did not write that odious piece of garbage that he cut-and-pasted and linked to...

But the fact that a) he apparently accepted the basic premises of the argument being forwarded, b) made no attempt to address the insane and baldfaced assertions being made, and c) completely refused, as a founder, moderator (with banning powers, as I know from experience!!), and front page poster on RedState to even attempt to unravel the skein of assertions, misinformation, and incredible strawmen inherent in that piece...

Makes his powers of observation, interpretation, cognition and argument suspect, at best.

At worst (and based on his other comments I am leaning toward the worst case) he is all to willing to give a nod and a wink to assertions that "Abortion is black Genocide" that "Abortion as a 'final solution' to the problem of 'Poor Blacks and Crime'" is something that is actually inherent in the Pro-Choice movement in the service of his political worldview."

I just think he's a racist asshole.

[NinjaPlease]

....Rosebud....

[petewsh61]

Ben and Evolution

PZ Meyers over at Pharyngula has a post on Benny Boys views without a clue about evolution.

Ben Domenech: Creationist (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/ben_domenech_creationist.php)

Included in the gems unearthed by Meyers is Ben's contention that mutation is an alternative theory to evolution. Ben, mutations are the source of variation that drives evolution.

If this is the best young intellect the right can produce, that's sad.