There goes any lingering respect I had for Glenn Greenwald and Salon.com 
Oh for fuck’s sake. This is beyond ridiculous. I’m so appalled that I’m not even sure what to say about it. What does one say when a prominent blogger and author likens a not-so-prominent blogger to a Nazi propagandist simply for daring to show support for President Obama and to provide a place for the so-called “Obots” to discuss positive news and images of our President?
[I have redacted a portion of the post out of respect for John and the agreement we made when he offered me a platform here.]
But Glenn? Glenn, I used to respect. He was calling out the Bushies on their bullshit when others in the media still had their heads up their asses. I agreed with his politics and appreciated the manner in which he was able to condense complicated constitutional principles into language that non-lawyers could understand (something I’ve always struggled with.) Even when he started to descend into Obama-bashing territory, I still agreed with some of his points, albeit not the way he phrased them.
But this? This is going too far:
Really? Comparing Blackwaterdog — a Jewish pro-Obama supporter/blogger, whose only crime, as far as I can tell, is blogging positive news and pictures about Obama — to Leni Riefenstahl, a fucking Nazi propagandist?
Blackwaterdog is a blogger who got ran out of DailyKos for daring to express support for Obama, and now, in the dickiest of dick moves, you’ve used your much larger platform to pick on her.
What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a paid columnist for a major online publication and you’re picking on a blogger using inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric — do you not see anything wrong with that?
No, apparently, he doesn’t. His defense? “No one complained when I said the same thing about Bush.” Seriously:
Whether or not you slammed the right during the Bush years is irrelevant. Did you ever single out a blogger — one who is using a wordpress.com account, for crying out loud! — and then liken that individual to a Nazi propagandist? I doubt it.
And, by the way, you *did* compare Obama to Hitler. Insulting those of us who read your dumb fucking tweet as you surely intended it, only makes you look like more of an asshole. The right thing to do is to apologize and admit your mistake and then try to make your point without resorting to schoolyard taunts, but I guess that’s not what assholes do, is it?***
By the way, if you check out her blog, it’s more than just a photo collage of blingy “I heart Obama” pictures, so just shut the fuck right up.
You’re disgusting.
[via WEESeeYou and The Only Adult in the Room]
***I will cop to being an asshole.
[Edited to remove links to my blog and stave off whining that I’m link trolling.]
The Republic of Stupidity
Geez, ABL…
Think of the huge favor Greenwald just did an unknown blogger… traffic to that site is only going to increase by a bazillion % or so, at least for the little while…
Tim
Oh Jesus, ABW. You have jumped the whale shark with this post.
Glenn will drink your milk shake.
Tim
Oh, I get it: ABW is acting out to pull links from Glenn’s blog to BJ to see her latest frothing screed. Desperate and pathetic, but it might draw a few hits.
WyldPirate
We get it ABL. The ONE must not be criticized.
All bow down and worship Dear Leader.
Angry Black Lady
If you read some of her posts, I don’t think she’s going to consider it a favor. She seems truly hurt and distressed by the attacks lobbed against her at DailyKos. There’s a difference between someone who blogs as a hobby and someone who blogs for a living. (I consider myself somewhere in the middle.)
Smaller bloggers do get their feelings hurt.
“It’s just the internet” is no longer a viable excuse. (not that I’m saying you are making that excuse.) There are real people behind these keyboards, and I am sick and tired of being ignored while Those Who Know Better call those of us who don’t find it necessary to bash Obama day in and day out, and who ::gasp:: still support Obama Obots, Nazi propagandists, and such.
Angry Black Lady
@Tim: Oh bite me. I will remove the links to ABLC.
gnomedad
In 3, 2, … Even the liberal Glen Greenwald thinks Obama supporters are a lot like Nazis.
debit
@WyldPirate: You know what? I tried reasoning with you. I thought I saw glimmers of the ability to communicate in some of your saner posts. But now I think you’re too far gone. Say hello to the pie filter, asswipe.
John Cole
Keep this shit out of my football thread.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Yes, Glenn, if you’d singled out some amateur blogger who simply displayed pictures of Bush along with links to positive news stories as a fucking Nazi propagandist, people would have had plenty of problem with that.
The man has lost it.
I’d tell everyone to hit up the blog and make blackwaterdog a few shekels, but her blog doesn’t run ads. Therefore, the only thing to do is to start ignoring Greenwald.
Mike The Dealer
@WyldPirate:
Where did ABL say that? She was complaining about Greenwald attacking a blogger and comparing them to a Nazi propagandist, how is this “Nobody can insult Obama”?
asiangrrlMN
I agree with ABL. It’s not about criticizing Obama–it’s about the unacceptable terms GG used for the blogger. As someone pointed out below thread, there are plenty of sites criticizing Obama unceasingly. Why the fuck does Glenn have to go after someone (and a female to boot) who wants to point out the good things Obama has done?
@WyldPirate: If that’s all you got from this post, then you have misread it completely.
This was a dick move by GG.
It’s interesting to me how this mirrors the AKM (at ‘the flats) getting outed. A few male commentators here said it would drive up her traffic and most people would kill for that kind of publicity. While most females understood how problematic the outing was.
P.S. I would be pissed as hell if someone like GG tweeted that about me.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I am sure the Leni reference was necessary for him to Go Godwin on Obama by inference. FFS, what in the fuck is wrong with someone who likes to focus on the good news side of Obama? Hell, the M$M and blogs are pretty much 24/7 Obama = FAIL! right now. Is it that offensive that there is one fucking place on the internet that happens to look at the positive side of the president? If you are GG or his ball washers, I guess so. What GG said about BWD/Obama says more about GG than anything else.
He loves to hate on others and he will use anyone to do it. What a prick.
debit
@The Republic of Stupidity: Not a favor. Blackwaterdog doesn’t need this kind of shit, in fact she left Daily Kos over this kind of shit.
robertdsc-PowerBook
LOL at the redacted part. I think Jane’s cute.
As for GG, bleh. Once a fucktard. always a fucktard.
ruemara
@WyldPirate:
So, you’re ok with a national voice, criticizing a private individual running her own blog by calling her the Leni Reifenstahl-a progandist filmmaker who promoted the actions of a guy who started World War 2 and slaughtered millions of Jews, Gays and Romany, not including the deaths on the actual fronts. Any pushback against the unseemliness of a man like Glenn Greenwald being a bully is “All bow down and worship the Dear Leader”.
At any point, do you ever read what you type and feel, just perhaps, you may be sliding into being someone you don’t want to be?
Who am I kidding? Of course not. Barack Obama is wrong on something, ergo, this is perfectly right.
DCPlod
@Tim:
Oh please, Glenn couldn’t even drink my milkshake; in fact,it was the other way round. Not helped by the fact that Krugman tweet of his was backed by a link that actually debunked Krugman’s (and by extension his) point. You can see from that timeline that soon after I and others took him to task for that Nazi comparison, he retracted it.
Angry Black Lady
@Tim: i seriously doubt GG gives me a moment’s thought. So, what’s your point? I’m not allowed to express my outrage at a prominent blogger picking on a smaller blogger?
I get it. I’m an Obot. Blah blah blah.
NEXT.
MB
So, when I say “image-based propagandist for a political leader”, what name comes to mind?
Yeah.
So that’s what happened. Glenn should have had enough sense to self-edit, but this rending of garments over it? Is just stupid.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: do you have any reading comprehension skills whatsoever?
jesus f. christ.
Dana Houle
@John Cole: Good thing he didn’t compare her work to real propaganda, like NFL Films.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@WyldPirate: Oh, come on. Greenwald is smearing a E-list blogger as a Nazi. A NAZI. This has fucking nothing to do with criticizing Obama.
What Greenwald is doing here is messed up. By Greenwald’s definition here, the average Sailor Moon fansite is also Nazi-style propaganda. This is stupid, and something I would have thought beneath Greenwald. Live and learn.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Mike The Dealer:
It’s called a ‘Straw man’… thereby justifying the introduction of WP’s favorite topic… how all the Obamabots here just just so darn intolerant…
Dana Houle
@MB: Yulia Timoshenko?
sherifffruitfly
It’s just how “true progressives” are. They simply can’t stand anyone saying anything nice about Obama.
It really is a non-trivial task to determine the practical difference between “true progressives” and republicans.
DCPlod
I’m starting to wonder if WyldPirate is in fact Glenn Greenwald. God knows he does a bang-up impression.
Angry Black Lady
@robertdsc-PowerBook: cute or not, I’m not going to poke at that hornet’s nest over here. I said I wouldn’t and I won’t.
The Republic of Stupidity
@debit:
Apparently you and ABL don’t read sarcasm too well…
OTOH… GG has already done what he’s done…
It would be my opinion that Greenwald is the one that comes off bad here…
Comparing an unknown blogger to perhaps the most famous Nazi propagandist in history? My first reaction was something along the lines of… ‘Geez… Glen sure embarrassed himself w/ THAT one…’
I dunno… mebbe it’s a bigger deal than I realize…
I recently watched ‘Triumph of the Will’… one scary flick…
And for my money, G Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in flight suit w/ matching cod piece came a lot closer to Riefenstahl than this website…
And many, many people, like me for instance, will end up going to that site when they might never have even heard of it…
Too… also…
Tim
Just went to Blackwaterdog’s blog. Glenn is spot-on.
As a bit of a WW2 buff, I have seen a LOT of Nazi Germany propaganda pics, a good number of them photographs of good ol’ Adolf being thronged by worshiping troops…kind of like the pics at BWD’s place. But, I get it, no one is supposed to actually make that observation. It is not allowed.
Naturally though, these types of pics are a big part of the reason O skedaddled his skinny little ass over there, so he could pose as a WAR PRESIDENT while everything goes to shit at home. “WAR PRESIDENT.” Where have I heard that before?
The moist O-worship BWD’s pad is embarrassing. Pretty clear to me that Glenn’s propaganda reference point touched a really sensitive nerve with ABL, thus her spittle-laced reaction. Which is, like most of ABL’s other posts, pretty embarrassing too.
Cacti
Glenn lives in the progressive paradise of Brazil…
With its super progressive 4 million strong child labor force.
Mike The Dealer
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I know, I was more trying to get WP to defend an comment that has no defense, but odds are by saying this to you I’ve proven I’m an unthinking Obot.
MB
@Dana Houle: Two points. And no, you cannot go to your room.
Angry Black Lady
@Tim: scroll. i know you know how.
Anya
@WyldPirate: Who the fuck was talking about Obama? ABL was pointing out GG’s douchbaggery. He was bullying and comparing an obscure blogger with, maybe, less than 100 followers to a notorious Nazi propagandist, who made official Nazi propaganda films. He needs to grow the fuck up. Seriously!
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Tim: If you think BWD’s site looks like Nazi propaganda, you are a lunatic. Deranged. Not remotely connected to reality.
I mean, damn. It isn’t my cup of tea, but NAZI FUCKING PROPAGANDA? You’re completely full of shit.
Angry Black Lady
@The Republic of Stupidity: my sarcasometer is currently broken; i had already braced myself for attacks.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Mike The Dealer:
I have to say… it’s THE perfect, textbook example of a straw man to boot…
gogol's wife
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
And there seems to be no consideration of what the person being propagandized actually stands for.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think a site for Obots is a fantastic idea. Maybe now when they get disgusted with GOS, they will go there instead of coming here.
soonergrunt
I don’t know why you guys are ragging on WyldPirate. All he said was “On the matter of fried pies, I am torn. They do resemble, in some ways, the true (that is, baked) pie, but the speed at which they are created suggests to me that the preparer is more interested in the rapidity of production, rather than in the quality of the end result. Therefore, I feel that a fried pie is less of a pie than a bald simulacrum: a cheat, an impostor, a substitute. Which is not to say they are not delicious, of course.”
I would think that’s an idea that is worthy of debate.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Angry Black Lady:
I hear ya… I hear ya…
I’ve had to replace several irony meters so far this year…
Like I said above… IMHO, Glenn comes across as a pretty substantial do()chbag for that…
Between pointy-headed snowmen on the right, and the Glens of the world on the left…
DCPlod
@Tim:
If you honestly think that BWD’s site is just like Nazi propaganda, whatever marbles you once had are now gone.
Same goes for your ridiculous reasoning that Obama’s gone to Afghanistan in December purely for a photo-op: you’re ascribing evil motives to these things without any proof whatsoever.
Sly
@MB:
It’s hard work being Salon’s most sanctimonious twat. If he doesn’t consistently bring his top game, they might bring Camille Paglia back.
Anya
@WyldPirate:
Where have I heard that before? This sounds eerily familiar but I can’t remember where I’ve heard it before. Can someone remind me?
Suck It Up!
there is no defense of this. if this came from right winger not one person would defend it. blackwaterdog’s blog is harmless and I have to wonder why so many people are shitting in their pants over it.
The Republic of Stupidity
@soonergrunt:
Is going to segue into a treatise on the merits of moose turd pie, by any chance?
bumblebums
@Sly:
oh gods no.
DCPlod
@MB:
The trouble with Greenwald is that he seems to have some kind of Tourette’s when he talks about/to Obama supporters – he’s been calling us “Obama cultists” and other variants for well over a year now. I guess stepping it up to Nazi lovers was the next logical step in his mind.
Ruckus
@Tim:
I don’t normally call out people directly because it is usually a waste of my time.
But WTF, are you seriously saying that someone who posts pictures of the president is a nazi because the pictures are of a countries leader? WTF!
I am speechless with the absolute stupidity you display.
Dennis SGMM
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Good though.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Dana Houle: He later apologized and compared BWD’s diary to TigerBeat instead.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Dennis SGMM:
Tee hee…
Ever done any Gandy dancing, by any chance?
ruemara
@Suck It Up!:
She posts actual news over there instead of the blogospheric circle jerk of whine. I stepped over there today to see what was up and I found out 350k jobs were not included in the last jobs report. So I read the article and was not infuriated with what Obama would do in the future. This, cannot be tolerated.
rikyrah
THANK YOU ABL.
thank you so much.
I was really upset when I saw the attacks begin on BWD, who is no editorialist. All she did was post on the happenings of the President, First Lady and First Family.
Period.
She didn’t even attempt to fight back against the a-holes who were attacking her pretty much everytime she posted a post on DK, until the very end.
I thought those people on DK were petty mofos. If they didn’t like her posts, then guess what – don’t open them up a-holes, and let those of us who did enjoy them, have a positive Obama space.
As for Greenwald – so done with him.
I don’t take muthafuckas on the right calling the President of the United States – who happens to be a Black man – HITLER.
SO, hell to the no that I’m gonna accept it from Greenwald.
Yes, mofo, if you compare BWD to HITLER’S filmmaker, you are by extension calling Barack Hussein Obama – HITLER.
so, f-em too.
thanks ABL.
this is about beating up on someone who didn’t ever do shyt or say shyt about Greenwald.
he’s less than a man.
he’s a bitchass.
MikeJ
What’s especially interesting is the traditional media story that the sacred troops all loooove republicans and can’t stand those pansy ass demoncraps. If you dare buck the dominant narrative it’s proof you want to kill six million jews.
Tim
Oh waaaaaaaaaaaaaa…poor BWD. She put up a public blog on the world wide web and is now getting traffic from people who come to see what she put up and form an opinion about it, one way or the other…oh boo hoo.
And not only that, but Glenn wrote something sarcastic about a poor little WOMAN!!!!! Oh my god, the humanity.
You people who think you are defending BWD are actually infantilizing her and condescending to her, and you should be embarrassed about that too.
And yes, the PICTURES to which Glenn refers are very similar to others taken of AH being thronged by German troops. How hard is that to admit? Also similar to those of GWB posing with the plastic turkey about eight fucking years ago during the same fucking war.
But you would like to distract from Glenn’s point about the propaganda comparison by screeching that he called O Hitler, which of course he never did. BUT HE IMPLIED IT, THE VOICES IN MY HEAD SAY SO!!!!!!!!
BH
So an over-the-top, ridiculously hostile blog post in response to a retracted reference in a tweet seems justified to you? Two wrongs evidently make a right now. Good to know.
Channel this same amount of anger (and a juvenile middle finger clipart graphic) at the powerful people who are actually getting people kicked off of unemployment benefits or foreclosed out of their houses or killed to save some obscure village in Afghanistan, and then you won’t seem like such a raving, shark-jumping maniac.
Suck It Up!
@ruemara:
read the comments sometime. intelligent people.
Tim
@Ruckus:
But WTF, are you seriously saying that someone who posts pictures of the president is a nazi because the pictures are of a countries leader? WTF!
Please link to where I called BWD a “nazi.” Thank you
jwb
You can think of it this way: on the one hand, if GG had to go to an obscure site like Blackwaterdog to make this point, the danger of Obama worship seems pretty damn low. So GG has just comically disproved his own point. On the other hand, if GG had to go to an obscure site like Blackwaterdog to make this point, we might ask why he is so fucking desperate to make this point at this moment. Really, why the rhetorical overkill?
I was also struck by GG’s pathetic little attempt to duck behind the authority of Krugman.
WyldPirate
@Mike The Dealer:
@Angry Black Lady:
From your post referring to GG, ABL :
Your wittle feefees got butthurt….
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@ruemara: Yeah, Hilda Solis purposefully left 300,000 jobs out. And what happens when they all get let go in January? Do you know how the jobs numbers are figured the way they are? Or why BWD uses Gallup to try and claim unemployment is a tad above 8%?
Suck It Up!
@BH:
way to avoid addressing what GG did.
Dennis SGMM
For someone who has been a high visibility blogger for as long as GG has, this was very stupid. If someone wants to venerate Obama 24/7 then so be it. That does not make them a propagandist, it makes them a believer in Obama. OTOH, if someone wants to castigate Obama 24/7 then so be that as well. It’s a matter of point of view and Greenwald should know that blogs (And comments) are all about point of view. Consigning someone to the deepest pit of hell because they interpret Obama’s actions one way or the other is entertaining but, like pissing your pants, it may give you a warm feeling for a while but, it doesn’t change a fucking thing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Tim: If BWD is somehow the most extreme propagandist ever, where does FOX fit in? How does one person posting pictures compare to a network that speaks for an entire party machine?
dlnelson
Everytime I try and write something it bags on me. It is time to get rid of the old folks in the senate and the house, they have been there for too long, time to retire them, no legacy babies, the country is changing. It is an old boys club, and the girls get to play when they are (well you fill in the blank), the ice queens, etc. Make them retire just like everyone else has to, make them get a job, at 65, without health benefits, and let us all see what happens. These folks have not idea what life is like. They want scientists, I have two, in their twenties. I am a stay at home mom, did all the real work. Paid all the bills. And still paying. Our country reps and sens are bought and paid for, Barak O. is fighting an uphill battle. These guys in the senate and congress will not go down without a fight. As an added annoyance, whenever the frat boys say, the american people have spoken, or america has told us, They do not speak for me. Give Obama some time, he is dealing with the crazy.
liberal
@ruemara:
Yes, because temporary help is hired in the retail sector during the holiday season every year. The reasoning behind that blog post was moronic.
The Republic of Stupidity
@rikyrah:
The association does become rather difficult to avoid, dunnit?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Well, BWD’s site is basically Tiger Beat for Obama. It’s more like a Justin Bieber fansite than a hardcore political blog. And, that’s just fine. The site is harmless.
And frankly, I’m very unimpressed that one of the most widely read civil-rights bloggers in the world decided to pick on a fan site. It’s just pathetic. This is supposed to be evidence of Obama’s march toward fascism? Puh-leaze. It’s only evidence of Glenn Greenwald’s march toward irrelevance.
WyldPirate
@BH:
Precisely. That was what I meant to convey with my snark.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Tim: And BWD doesn’t approve any comment that doesn’t conform to her view. Mention that scum like Dick DeVos and Tom Donohue are supporting the South Korean free trade agreement? Comment not approved. Mention HAMP? Nope, can’t approve that comment.
DCPlod
Shorter Tim: Know who else got his photo taken with soldiers?
An extremely well-known, influential blogger comparing an unknown, small-time blogger to a Nazi propagandist and referring to her as being among ‘the sickest’ of Obama’s fans is the act of a bully. There’s no getting round that.
Zuzu's Petals
I have to admit that following the Michelle Obama fashion blog is one of my guilty pleasures:
Mrs. O
I wonder if Glenn would think this blogger is Michelle’s Joseph Goebbels?
Anya
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: But did he apologize to Abraham Foxman?
The Dangerman
@Tim:
I’m not saying you are a fucking asshole; I’m just implying it.
Anya
@Zuzu’s Petals: FTW
Allan
Many of the people at Daily Kos who are beating their chests with pride at having run off BWD, and hoping she takes the rest of the Obots with her, are simultaneously denying that she was in any way bullied.
Zipperupus
Reifenstahl’s work was a touchstone of exploitation. The exploitation of the human form, archtecture, music and choreography in order to connect beauty with Nazism.
Glenn’s comparison is inapt. Not just because it’s a small blog without the power of the state behind it. It is inapt because it is childish to link being a fan and supporter, no matter how ardent, with the aesthetic barbarity of Leni’s work.
Glenn is such a moron when he steps outside his area of expertise.
Lolis
I think ABL is a great blogger. Glad to have her here. Can she be our ombudsman?
soonergrunt
@Anya: You need to stop putting words in his mouth! All he EVER talks about is pie. He just goes on and on and on, and it never has shit to do with the subject. If you’re going to accuse somebody of saying something they didn’t, you need to pick someone else! Believe me, if he EVER talks about anything besides pie, I’ll remember it!
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: You are right. I don’t know why he said what he did about BWD’s site. Someone must have pointed it out to him. All this would have been avoided had he just labeled it TigerBeat or a Beiber-type fan site to begin with.
Suck It Up!
@liberal:
why was it moronic? that fact was stated on the site in giant white font. she didn’t lie in her post.
clone12
I think more than the Nazi reference, the fact that Glen Greenwald is bullying someone less well-known than he is makes him a total douchebag. It’s one thing to go after a prominent cheerleader who has an actual column with some actual influence, but going full Godwin on an amateur blogger? Really big of you. What next? Stalk some kid who writes a pro-Obama column in his high school newspaper?
DCPlod
@WyldPirate:
So objecting to Obama being compared to Hitler is objecting to all criticism of Obama? Wow – that’s one fucked up thought process you’ve got there.
soonergrunt
@The Republic of Stupidity: We’re pretty close now.
I mean, some people just go into a total pants-shitting rage about politics, and national security, and so on. Why should pie be any different?
liberal
@dlnelson:
Not that I have any respect for the considerable number of jerks in Congress, but you could just as well say that Obama was bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Anya: Why would he?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Tim: @59
@29
Oh right, you didn’t specifically say she was a Nazi, you’re only saying that she’s running Nazi-style propaganda, which is very different I’m sure.
Lolis
@Zuzu’s Petals:
I read Mrs. O too. I love the First Lady. I also love blackwaterdog’s stuff. Yet somehow I manage to disagree with the president sometimes. I even call and write letters. I guess reading those sites didn’t turn me into a hero-worshipping zombie.
Suck It Up!
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Except its not that either. Everything over there is a fact. It links to articles on policies. Its not just a bunch of pics of his dog and commentary on how cute Michelle looked at her luncheon. GG should have left it alone period.
Zuzu's Petals
@MB:
Naomi Wolfe?
Of course your point only works if you’re comparing political leaders to political leaders. When one says “political leader” is Hitler really the first name that comes to mind?
No, GG meant to compare this small-time blogger to a professional image-maker who helped sell a despot to the public by making him appear godlike. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
ruemara
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
and @liberal
yes, I did read both articles that jobs report referenced. You know what, based on what you’re saying, you may have skimmed a few bits of both. Some of the hires are temp, some may not. They don’t know, there is no absolute that all those jobs will be gone come January, obviously, they should ask you two. But the hiring does affect the actual numbers as the Dept. of Labor adjusts all numbers to keep things “smooth”. This is not a fact that is disseminated in reporting the jobs numbers and since most of the reports were all very shocked at how retailers weren’t hiring at all this season, makes the CW seem not that wise. And, I didn’t ask either of you for your feedback. You don’t like me thinking it’s a good thing, then too goddamn bad.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Suck It Up!: Because BWD doesn’t understand how unemployment numbers are calculated .. that’s why .. or is Hilda Solis trying to undermine Obama now? Or will BWD admit she was in error when 280,000 of those jobs disappear in January?
Michael Finn
I’ve been done with Glenn for a long time. He is no longer content to go after people who can defend themselves, he is going after people who are in the middle of his campaigns.
Ever since he went after the guy who turned in Private Mannings, a guy named Lamo who has Asperger’s, I didn’t like what I read. Throughout the article, there was innuendo and cosnpiracy theories that pointed to nothing. He noted an article commented on the weird relationship between a reporter and Lamo. They just quoted the guy and said that Lamo was a source for the guy. It was little things like that that added up to a smear piece. For Glenn to have written about a person like that was just too much for me. This wasn’t the President, Senator, or Reporter. This was a guy who thought he was trying to do the right thing.
He called Asperger’s, “A fashionable disease.” Which to me, kind of tells me he is a sociopath but an articulate one. Calling somebody a Nazi for blogging about the President is kind of sickening. It shows that he has become pundit.
Suck It Up!
@liberal:
you can say it, but it would be a lie.
The Republic of Stupidity
@soonergrunt:
And every damned time, I end up being the cook… sheesh…
Andrew
While I applaud Glenn Greenwald’s focus on civil liberties, he’s awfully tiresome sometimes, and I see no reason to read his blog now that Adam Serwer has a much more readable one that covers the same ground.
liberal
@Suck It Up!:
It’s moronic because it has nothing to do with predicting how the economy is doing, all things being equal. That’s the whole point of seasonal detrending. That post shows that Greenwald’s characterization of the blogger as an Obama sycophant was completely accurate.
Anticorium
I’m reserving judgement until I find out what her countertops are made of.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Suck It Up!: It is not fact. It’s a fan site. Did you see my earlier comment? I posted something questioning the South Korean free trade deal. Meaning, the trade deal is NAFTA-esque. Guess what, the comment was never “approved.” It’s not a reality-based site like Balloon Juice.
Ruckus
@The Dangerman:
I imagine it is intended as a pretty strong implication.
RinaX
@ruemara:
Yes, certain GOS posters would zero in on the pictures, and completely ignore the fact that she often found news articles of things being done by the Executive Branch and on foreign policy that for the most part get ignored by even left blogs because it’s not sexy congressional stuff that gets you on the talk shows.
I personally reduced my GOS visits not because of criticism, but because they lost their damn mind a long time ago, and it’s just getting worse and worse. At least here there really is a good mix of opinions, and you can tell someone to fuck off directly without getting in trouble.
chaseyourtail
This doesn’t surprise me one bit….and this is the reason why I despise Glenn Greenwald. I wrote a diary a ways back on Daily Kos (which made the rec list). In it, I put a dorky little poll asking whether Huffington Post was turning conservative. Apparently, Greenwald saw it on the rec list and became so incensed he decided to do a hit job on it. Seriously. He put a link to my diary on his blog and basically misrepresented everything I wrote. I think he accused me of (big surprise) mindlessly cheerleading for Obama. But honestly, I couldn’t believe that he would even waste his time going after me, a complete nobody who happened to write a silly diary on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Greenwald will not hestiate to use his prominent platform to cyper bully non-journalists. Greenwald is extremely spiteful and vidictive and he hates Obama supporters with a passion. If anyone defends this President with any regularity he’ll try to slander them. He’ll go after pretty much anyone who has the temerity to express their appreciation for this Presdient. And he actually had the nerve recently to accuse writers at the Nation magazine of conducting a smear campaign against someone. It takes one to know one, I guess.
I’ve read many of BWD’s diaries on DK, and I like them very much. BWD is not a journalist, she/he does not have an obligation to be “objective”. I found her diaries to be a good balance actualy to all the Obama sucks diaries that have become a staple at DK. I’ve seen some of the most appallingly hateful things written in BWD’s comment threads. It seems some people loath Barack Obama so much that it drives them absolutely crazy to see anything positive written about him.
For Greenwald to come out and attack BWD with this crap is an all time low even for him. He has yet again shown is true colors and they are a bright shade of ugly.
Michael
@Cacti:
I always figured he moved there for the sex.
Suck It Up!
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
DUDE admit what? there’s a paragraph beneath her own words that clearly states that these were seasonal. You think she doesn’t know that? SHE picked out that part of the article and put it on her blog so I’m pretty sure she knows what it meant.
you know what? Fuck it! I’m smelling a desperate attempt to smear and discredit the blogger in order to justify GG’s comment.
soonergrunt
@The Republic of Stupidity: Well, I guess it’s a lot like military personnel and their spouses:
they also flip the fuck out, who only stand and cook.
Dan
I’m generally happy to have someone like greenwald out there fighting the fight, but he is an intolerable douchebag sometimes. I think his comments here crystallize what bothers me about him the most. He turns everyone who disagrees with him into the devil.
liberal
@Suck It Up!:
The reasoning is solid: if we impugn politicians based on who contributed to their campaigns, then it follows that Obama has unseemly connections to Goldman Sachs.
In Obama’s case, it’s actually pretty good reasoning, given that he’s hired people connected to Goldman Sachs; and that he’s been extremely easy on the banksters (sorry, Obots, given the banksters 98% of what they want does not constitute being hard on them; nor is apparent bankster displeasure with Obama and courting of the Republicans proof of anything).
But since you’re an Obama sycophant yourself, you’re immune to reason.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@ruemara: The way I understand it, if all 300,000 stay they will be listed in January, or there abouts. And as I said, I am sure Hilda Solis is just itching to subvert the President.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Suck It Up!: Why would it be a lie? Look at all of Little Timmeh’s staff.
RATDIX
@BH: Looooooooooooooooooove you.
And seriously, whatever one thinks about his insult to the weird and inscrutable blackwaterdog, you have to be very stupid to think that Glenn Greenwald thinks Obama is like Hitler. Also, she was not run out of DailyKos. She had about a billion fans and a handful of very vocal and annoying critics. She did about fifty GBCWs and finally left for good because apparently when one posts on a public blog anything but 100% approval is unacceptable.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tim:
Possibly because Obama JUST GOT BACK FROM AFGHANISTAN?
A good number of newspapers ran those same pics…are they propagandists too?
Please pick a better example.
burnspbesq
Help us, Marty-wan Lederman. You’re our only hope.
Suck It Up!
@chaseyourtail:
He’s just trying to save us from ourselves. He means well.
jaywillie
If Pol Pot had a website, it would look like this.
What was particularly humorous to me about Greenwald’s Twitter comments after he rescinded the Riefenstahl comparison was that he blamed the distraction on others and not his idiotic comparison of a largely anonymous blogger to a Nazi propagandist.
Can’t people criticize without playing the Nazi card? That you can’t probably says you really need to work on formulating those criticisms in cogent way instead of relying on the hysterical, hyperbolic screaming that passes for commenting on so many blogs…of course, if people did that, I suppose the Internet my cease to exist.
The Republic of Stupidity
@soonergrunt:
Or, as the very, very great William Burroughs once opined…
WyldPirate
@DCPlod:
No. I didn’t make a judgement on whether GG’s use of the Hitler comparison (which I didn’t read BTW, so I don’t know the context) was good or bad. It was most probably hyperbole. But I’m not going to bother reading it in context because it doesn’t matter too me much what he said.
Instead, I was snarking on ABLs freakout, over-the-top whining about GG.
I defend both ABL’s and GG’s right to say whatever the fuck they want. Mine, too. I just found it ironic that folks like her get upset and go off on folks all the time–the main focus o9f most of her posts– and then get upset at who others go off on someone else for what they say. That was my point.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Suck It Up!: She is trumpeting those numbers up like the MSM is fucking over the President. In this case, they aren’t. Unless she wants a January number worse by 300,000.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@BH:
You do know that once you say something you really can’t unsay it, right? You can’t erase it, it’s fact and it happened. GG can apologize all he wants, he said what he said for the reasons he said it.
Nothing will change that.
Anya
@clone12:
More and more it gets harder to distinguish Firebaggers from Teabaggers
liberal
@Suck It Up!:
Here’s the total of what she wrote (I haven’t bothered to parse the comments of that post):
(1) post headline: “Oh well, let’s forget 350,000 new jobs…”
(2) post content (aside from the content pulled from Time): “It looks like the Labor Department may have missed 350,000 new jobs – no less – in its disappointing job numbers report from Friday.”
A pretty reasonable interpretation of (1) and (2) is that we shouldn’t “forget” these new jobs, and that this is some kind of good news, regardless of what’s in the pulled quote.
burnspbesq
@MB:
Now THAT’s funny.
Suck It Up!
@liberal: @Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I know. Its hard. Your own Dear Leader’s actions are so indefensible that the only thing you can do is to distract from the actual topic. There, there. Its Okay.
liberal
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Heh.
I’m waiting for Nick to drop by and remind us that it can’t be true, because the banksters now say they hate Obama.
Anya
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: This might explain
tomvox1
I have become convinced that Glenn and Hamsher are both plants bankrolled by Koch, Inc. to spew out negative static no matter who is president/in power in order to convince us that government is The Enemy no matter what it does, thereby advancing so-called Libertarian theology (i.e. let the giant companies run things and neuter the federal government). That he would constantly (desperately?) reiterate his past slamming of the Right as proof of his equanimity is highly suspect strictly because he no longer seems to slam the Right at all anymore. And that makes his motivations fishy as a week old haddock. You go ABL.
liberal
@Suck It Up!:
LOL. The difference between me on the one hand and you and the thin-skinned blogger on the other is that I don’t “worship” a Dear Leader. When people I tend to admire are wrong about something, I say they’re wrong about it. (E.g. Krugman was wrong about the connection between the spot and futures markets for oil.)
It’s like one of GG’s replies to twitterer “rootless_e,” who I think has occasionally commenter here at BJ. IIRC, it went something like this: “You have about 3,500 tweets. Can you point to a single one that’s critical of Obama?”
soonergrunt
@The Republic of Stupidity: Well, there is that new position in the restaurant kitchen, you know. Until recently, most restaurants used the “Kitchen Brigade System” perfected by Escoffier. After the Chef comes the Sous Chef, followed by the Saucier, and the many Chefs de Partie. Well under the new system, the position of Misanthropic Psychopath shall be inserted between the Sous Chef and the Saucier.
He or she will kill restaurant patrons at random intervals.
beergoggles
Aside from GG’s douchiness about this, has he ever criticized sites like whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com ?
I’m just curious whether it’s just the pictures that drove GG over the edge, cuz there’s plenty of positive things said about Obama that doesn’t get such a reaction from him,
burnspbesq
Greenwald was fantastic from 2005-07. He’s long since past his sell-by date, and gets smellier and more rancid every day.
liberal
@tomvox1:
Yawn. My dad despises Republicans, told me decades ago that “A good Republican is a dead Republican,” and all I hear from him these days re politics is how Obama is destroying the Democratic Party.
Of course, he’s in the pay of Koch too…can’t wait to get my own hands on some of that stuff and throw one hell of a party…
jwb
@burnspbesq: Who needs to self-edit, when you can simply update?
liberal
@burnspbesq:
As opposed to you, who probably stank from day one.
jwb
@tomvox1: In fact, they don’t even need to be plants if they are are true believers; they just need to be funded and placed.
Suck It Up!
I’ll just say this – anyone defending GG is a fucking hypocrite and is too blinded by their hate for Obama to see what he did was way over the line. Check yourselves before you call someone a fucking Obot.
pathetic.
Michael Finn
@jaywillie:
He’s actually done a posting about how it is alright to compare people to Nazi’s if they are doing what the Nazi’s did.
Ash Can
I still did respect Greenwald before this, and I’m sure he’ll write more stuff in the future with which I’ll agree. But this little episode tells me a lot about him, and none of it complimentary. It’ll be difficult to read his stuff in the future and not see it through the prism of this.
jwb
@Suck It Up!: The interesting question, however, is why he did it and why he did it now. Because this was orders of magnitude overkill even for him.
Belvoir
” I agreed with his politics and appreciated the manner in which he was able to condense complicated constitutional principles into language that non-lawyers could understand “
Ha, when did he ever condense anything? He’s the most chronic over-writer ever, taking ten thousand words to say what he could get out in a paragraph.
That said, this is really overblown. No, he didn’t call her a Nazi. He used Leni Riefenstahl as a clumsy, lazy thoughtless shorthand for, “visual propagandist”. Which is overblown and heavy handed too. He apologized in a later Tweet, which no one seems to care to discuss. Admitted it was “inflammatory and extreme”. It was. But it was a stupid Tweet, not some freaking essay attacking this blogger I have never heard of.
This could have been an amusing snarky post, ABL, rather than the aggrieved gripe here. It would have been a fun read. I like your work here mostly, but this is a grade-school he-said-this where the “angry” part of your handle is really tiresome to read, that you take it so personally and ascribe the absolute worst faith to GG’s Tweet, made a post about it, all indignant. It’s really not that entertaining to read you exaggerate Greenwalds’ “crime” here. I would have loved a funny take on this, taking on Greenwald for it. But I guess you’re not that sort of writer.
soonergrunt
@Michael Finn: GG lives in Brazil, doesn’t he? Didn’t a bunch of nazis move to Brazil? I’m just sayin…
gizmo
ABL,
Glenn Greenwald fights his ass off on a daily basis to expose corruption in government and incompetence in our corporate media. The guy is up against overwhelming odds, with the all the entrenched economic interests, the government, and the press positioned against him. If occasionally he goes over the line and says some dumb angry shit, it’s not the the end of the world. Plus, he acknowledged his mistake and retracted his Tweet. Do you need him to commit public hari-kari or something? The world desperately needs more like GG, and this little incident doesn’t change my support for him one bit.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Is this even news? I don’t know how many times I have heard employment numbers in the news that included the caveat that some numbers include temporary or seasonal jobs that will be gone in the future. Reporting them as jobs is not inaccurate, is it. Temporary or not, they are jobs are they not?
Really, this is just stupid shit to throw around as something material that ‘proves’ that someone is misrepresenting data.
burnspbesq
@liberal:
This is me ignoring you until you show some evidence of a functioning brain.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@RATDIX: Exactly. It’s the same reason Bonddad left. They couldn’t handle criticism.
somethingblue
Blackwaterdog was regularly on the GOS rec list before she took her marbles and went home, so I don’t know that the “picking on an obscure blogger” thing is quite accurate. She’s no Greenwald, but she clearly has a not insignificant fan base.
“Leni Riefenstahl” may be a little strong, but honestly, Blackwaterdog’s diaries always struck me as being like something out of North Korea. Which doesn’t mean I think Obama is Kim Jong-Il, just that it’s sort of embarrassing and creepy to watch an adult in a democracy displaying that sort of obsequiousness to a politician.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tim:
They’re similar to pictures of just about every modern leader of every country that has a military. It just takes a special mindset to make the immediate comparison to Hitler. I’m putting this as nicely as I can.
burnspbesq
@gizmo:
No, the world needs Marty Lederman to resume blogging, and Scott Horton to write more. They are the real deal. Greenwald is a 16-year old kid who thinks he’s Clapton because he memorized all the licks from “White Room.”
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I never said they weren’t jobs. I asked if you, or those trumpeting those numbers, if they knew how the BLS figured the jobs/unemployment numbers. Basically what you are saying is that Hilda Solis is trying to fuck over the President, since last I checked, the BLS is part of the DoL.
tomvox1
@liberal:
Lemme guess: Your dad is an old white guy? I suppose what Bill Clinton did to the Dem Party was just groovy, baby.
I do agree with him on the “Only Good Republican is a Dead Republican” motto, though…now more than ever.
Michael Finn
@Belvoir: Yes, because somebody comparing a small sized blogger to the Nazi’s actresses deserves a funny response. Did it deserve the mass of shit storm it caused? No, but this kind of thing happens when you act like a douche bag.
jwb
@gizmo: He’s up against overwhelming odds, so he does what? takes out his frustration by turning the tables on a little blog where he has overwhelming odds. Sorry but that angle is going nowhere.
I come back to the action itself: why did he do it? Really, GG is looking for Obama sycophants to hold up as bad examples and this is the best he can do? It’s just pathetic.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Odie Hugh Manatee: And one last thing. They won’t be counted either when 98% of them are let go in January. So it’s a wash.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
No, her site is no Balloon Juice but then why would you care about that? It’s her site and she can run it the way she wishes, just like John does. I can’t blame her a bit for keeping whatever comments she wants out of her site. She doesn’t need any self-appointed sanctimonious shit-slingers on the left and their coterie of ratfuckers from the right to bring their version of The Truth to her site.
They already have the rest of the internet to shit all over and they’re doing a pretty good job of it.
martha
@Zuzu’s Petals: Oh, thank you! Love the link.
And I too wonder why a self-proclaimed self-important self-promoting blogger/writer who really needs a good editor would call out a lowly blogger? What’s with that? Oh, I forgot. He’s just an ass and he must have figured his name wasn’t floating through the blogosphere enough in the past two weeks so he needed to punch up the clicks/links. Narcissist much?
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: Feefees? Butthurt? What is this, high school? Neither my feelings nor my butt hurt. You made a point that had nothing to do with what I wrote. I pointed that out. You then tried to mask that by claiming it was snark. It wasn’t. Snark I can appreciate. That wasn’t even close.
@BH: I will write what I please, when I please. Scroll right on by, dear.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Hmm, this one’s a tough call. While anyone over the age of twelve ought to be ashamed for having created this ridiculous site, the comparison to Riefenstahl is, to be generous, labored. Greenwald has godwined himself on this one and gets a demerit. Good to see he is distancing himself from it.
You also overreacted a bit, ABL. Whatever the national drink of Brazil is, pour yourself one and relax, it’s a Sunday night.
Zuzu's Petals
@Michael Finn:
I’ve been off him for a long time as well. There were just too many posts that took intellectual shortcuts or that were based on bad information altogether for me to really trust him. And his general peevishness – worst evidenced by his tendency to jump into other people’s blogs and argue with commenters – is just offputting.
Michael Finn
@somethingblue: So Nazi comparisons are out the window but North Korea is acceptable? You know, the same one that let a few million of it’s own citizens die rather than force their leader to beg for food?
Just… Stop… Just stop comparing blackwaterdog to the minions of dictators that killed millions of people. She is a excited fan, that is all. Glenn was far out of line with his characterization but he apologized, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is a jerk but it’s a nice attempt to put it right. In about a day or so, this whole thing will die down.
Then we can all get back to our mutual hatred of… Spins wheel… Justin Beiber.
WyldPirate
ABL, you clearly must have been drunk when you wrote this:
Really? Here is “page 3” of the Blackwaterdog
“President Obama went back to play basketball today. Sasha and Malia let him win, i hope…”
followed by an Obama picture
“SWEETNESS.”
followed by an Obama picture
A short hundred word or so post bitching about “heroic journalism” from the NYT critical of Obama. and then:
“To erase my disgust, i played a little bit with the interview the first couple gave Barbara Walters and grabbed few screen caps, just to enjoy some beauty and sanity.”
followed by short slide show of Obama images from BW interview…
Hey boys and girls a new post from BWD caled:
“Lipsynching:
The entire Obama family, with an entourage of 12 stitches, went to see Craig Robinson’s Oregon State playing Howard University today in Washington. The president, BTW, is still pretty pretty.”
And guess what it’s followed by?
sixteen pictures of Obama and his family at a basketball game?
It may be that GG went over the top with his comparison to Lenny Riefenstahl, but the person definitely has some sort of Obama-worshiping picture fetish going on. There are easily a hundred or more pictures of Obama on her blog in less than 10 days. Many with weird little captions over them.
junebug
@liberal:
Actually, burnspbesq is quite right. While GG might call himself a progressive, he is just another pseudo-republican-turned progressive– in fact-libertarian.
It’s easy to type the word liberal, but given the rest you have written, it’d be hard to believe — especially that stuff about your dad. Maybe you meant yourself?
Me, I bitched about GWB and still bitch about republicans. But you know what? Obama is doing a good job for someone who has one network, almost all of talk radio and half of the internet concern trolling or outright lying about him and anything he does. Do you think GWB could have withstood that?
El Tiburon
As a big GG supporter and fan, it was a stupid comment he made, but…
He did rescind the comparison for what it is worth. Perhaps not much.
But to respond with the type of vitriol that ABL did was over th top. A stupid comment does not erase allmof the good that he does for the cause. It did make me queasy in the past to see all of the photops by Bush and the soldiers. Just like it does to see any world leader draped in ‘glorifying’ shots with soldiers. It makes them seem bloodthirsty.
So GG, calling it as he sees it regardless of party affiliation, did that here.
I cannot and don’t expect perfection from anyone, so I will continuemto respect and appreciate what GG does. As I do hamsher and Kos. You know, glass houses and all.
Also, chill the fuckmout and take a chill pill.
Andrew
@burnspbesq:
[I said this above but] READ Adam Serwer!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Yes but they still existed, right? All I am saying is that this point is such a small one that it really makes me shake my head at how the anti-Obama nuts are grasping at anything to throw. GG going after BWD? Really? Is that all he has left? No, it’s all he can focus on.
The objective of his post was to say that Obama=Hitler. BWD was just a useful prop for him to use against Obama, that’s all.
junebug
@burnspbesq:
This.
Are you reading my mind this evening, counselor?
Dennis G.
I have to say that when I heard of Greenwald’s comment earlier today I just shook my head. For some it is not enough just to attack Obama 24/7 they must go after anybody who supports him. The Obot slur was getting old, so I guess now supporters of Obama are Nazis. It was a straight-up TeaBagger move by Greenwald and he should be called out on it.
That said this is all just fucking stupid. One wonders when we will find the space to unite against our common foes again. From the look of things it will be a while.
But it was more than the general Obots are Nazis meme that I found odd in his comments. It was also that he completely displayed ignorance about Riefenstahl and her lasting impact on the visual vocabulary of politics.
It is worth pointing out that Leni Riefenstahl was an excellent filmmaker who lent her considerable skills to support the goals of fascism. She did not just put together a string of photographs shot by others with some comments. To compare the work of Riefenstahl to the work of BWD is a failure on multiple levels. Even when just comparing the images each put together there is no comparison. Riefenstahl was a propagandist and filmmaker at the top of her game and she created a political visual vocabulary that is still used today in political ads from around the world. BWD is a blogger who puts up photos and comments on her wordpress site. It is like equating a puddle to an ocean because you think they are both wet.
Glenn Greenwald is a very smart guy and I’m sure that he knows he made a fucked-up analogy here, but he is also one of those fellas who are incapable of admitting error. I suspect he will gut it out and his defenders will defend him with the usual cult-like ferocity. Boys are like that sometimes.
I find the levels of irrational hatred that President Obama generates from both the Right and the Left to be a fascinating development. There may be some reasons for it besides the color of his skin and I hope that turns out to be the case, but mere policy disagreements between Obama and some on the left seems insufficient to explain the levels of hatred that appear to burn more intense than levels of hatred that the same folks once had for Bush. I hope there is an explanation beyond the most obvious one, but I am beginning to doubt that.
The progressive/populist movement in America has always had a racist element. The prairie populists of a century ago organized with white supremacy as one of their core principles. I think a lot of our modern progressives have yet to shake off or at least acknowledge that baggage in the traditions of their movement.
I find the irrational rage at Obama to be a strange turn of events and calling folks who point out that trend Obots does not make it go away. And when somebody like ABL is sent over the edge by this relentless shit, using centuries-old memes—about weak black men who are too scared to fight and are controlled by white folks who tell ‘em how high to jump—might not be the best approach to defend Greenwald’s latest foolishness.
Cheers
Michael Finn
@WyldPirate: Why are you doing this? You are trying to prove a blog of a fan of the President, which I approve of more than half the crap out there (A Best Buy Blog, WTF?), is going overboard by posting and commenting about the President too many times? Doesn’t this seem a little pointless?
El Tiburon
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I should have eplied to your post and simply typed ‘ditto’
Angry Black Lady
@RATDIX: Where did anyone say that GG thinks Obama is like Hitler? That isn’t close to the point.
eco2geek
You’re right, ABL, Glenn stepped over the line by comparing blackwaterdog with Leni Riefenstahl. It was a dickish thing to say.
Daily Kos currently has a diary about this with almost 2000 comments on the rec list. There are fistfights galore in the comments.
Not sure why people found blackwaterdog’s photo diaries so inflammatory. Hell, as a dyed-in-the-wool cynic and contrarian myself (i.e. not an Obot), I think Obama and his wife and family are handsome, good looking, popular, and very photogenic.
(Which also puts the lie to Glenn Greenwald, in that Obama hardly needs a propagandist to make him look good. He practically does that all by himself.)
And it’s not like there’s a lack of “people being wrong on the Internet.” Why pick on blackwaterdog?
Lavocat
Wow. Is it hot in here er what?
Greenwald is usually spot on but even he is known for mistakes. Hard for me to believe that a progressive, gay, Jewish constitutional scholar would go Godwin just like that over a few pictures on some nameless blog.
God save us from the Obamabots but going Godwin is like swallowing a grenade. WTF Glen?
junebug
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I find this defense of GG amusing, given what he used to do on his blogspot blog before he was at Salon.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: You obviously have not read most of my posts. It’s usually a good idea to know what you’re talking about before you comment so you don’t have to backtrack and try to explain yourself.
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
Oh bullshit You wrote this in your own fucking post:
You made the fucking leap that with GG comparing this blogger to Riefenstahl that HE was saying Obama was Hitler.
He didn’t fucking compare Obama to Hitler in that series of Tweets you posted. Perhaps he did somewhere else, but not in the Tweets you posted above. You made that leap and you got butthurt about it and You went off about it.
And Greenwald is right–this BlackwaterDog DOES have a creepy obsession with Obama pictures.
You have the right to go off about it. Greenwald has the right to make the over-the-top comparison to the propagandist of a country’s leader and BlackwaterDog has the right to propagandize Obama.
And I have the right to snark on you for making a fucking mountain out of a mole hill.
Zuzu's Petals
@Lolis:
I must say I’m getting a little tired of the big-belt-on-everything look. But the brooches just never get old.
tomvox1
@WyldPirate:
Who gives a shit if it’s a fansite? Look how many high power liberal blogs are dedicated to portraying Obama as a giant pussy/neo-fascist/sell out/corporate pawn. Don’t you think that’s a little weird seeing as he’s the only game in town for the foreseeable future…captions not withstanding, of course. If this anonymous (and powerless) person hearts the Big O like Justin Bieber…for fuck’s sake let ’em! How could it possibly matter to you/Glenn/any-fuckin-body? Assholes…
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Shit slinger, huh? If you consider reality-based commentary shit slinging, then fine. I just pointed out a fact about the way the jobs numbers are figured. You have to take the good with the bad. Would she rather there we a +330,000 job number this month, and a 250,000 number in January? If so, then fine. But she is insinuating that Hilda Solis has it out for the President because the BLS is underreporting the number this month. There is one other thing I almost forgot. Given what the Pukes want(no more QEII), what would you rather have? A poor UE number and more QEII or a “real” employment number and a growing chorus from the right to halt QEII? I’m just telling you what you’d be up against.
El Tiburon
@Dennis G.:
What irrational hate from the left? I find most, if not all, very rational.
Components of the left do not hate him because he is a Kenyan socialist but because he has failed in so many areas exactly when this country needed a true leader.
So the recent tough criticisms from the left are very deserved. He was never my hero or savior just another politician and I personally have no problem calling him out. I will most likely vote for him again, but I may also stay home.
If we are going to get fucked, I’d rather it be by a republican so we can start this entire thing over if we must. If obama continues to lay down for the republicans, then fuck him, that ain’t what I voted for.
junebug
@El Tiburon:
GG is all for GG. He’s not a Democrat, not a Liberal. GG is in it for himself. To compare a blogger to a NAZI — oh, he apologized? That is what is commonly called a non-apology apology. While that might work for you, it’s just chicken shit.
martha
@Dennis G.: Dennis, thanks for the broader context. It seems like I spend a lot of time shaking my head these days. I understand the hate from the right and the teabaggers. But this attitude on the left has gone beyond “where’s my pony, I want it NOW.” At some point, one does begin to wonder if all of these people can be so immature and short-sighted about how the political process actually works and start looking for other reasons for their vitriole and disdain.
junebug
@Dennis G.:
Thank you for that, Dennis.
Angry Black Lady
@Belvoir: Sorry, I don’t find picking on someone half your size, and then refusing to apologize worth a funny response.
@WyldPirate: Who cares how many pictures she posts? She’s not blogging at TPM. She’s on a damn wordpress account. GG has thousands of followers and loyalists. She has a fraction of that. GG pulled a dick move and called her blog photographic veneration, which it isn’t. How much hate mail do you think she’s gotten as a result? She may be moderating her comments, but she still has to sort through them. I’m sure it’s a ral boost to her ego. People on the Internet, as you well know, can be assholes.
To everyone complaining about the formatting/pictures, This is a repost from my blog. It’s my blogging style. I copied and pasted the HTML.Take it or SCROLL PAST IT. I am ignoring all such comments from here on out. It’s a waste of my time to respond.
Michael Finn
@Angry Black Lady: At least he is just saying that it is creepy instead of comparing her to a cog in various murderous regimes.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@gizmo:
A lot of good can be undone with one stupid statement. Just because Hamsher or Greenwald (or anyone else) once did something Good and Noble, that does not give them a Get Out Of Stupid Shit You Do card for life. There comes a time when the good you have done is outweighed by the stupid shit you are doing. Greenwald and Hamsher are long past that time.
This isn’t to say that they will never do anything good again either, all it is saying is that as of some time ago they derailed and seem more than happy to remain that way.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@junebug:
Are you feeling alright?
mclaren
This sentence is poorly constructed — a rarity for ABL. the way you’ve phrased this makes it sound as though Cole used inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric. You should have said:
You’re a paid columnist for a major online publication and you’re using inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric to pick on a blogger—do you not see anything wrong with that?
As a lawyer, ABL, you should be keenly aware of these kind of details. The way you phrased that sentence turned the meaning into the inverse of what you intended…at least, to a casual reader.
And now to the point of your post…
No, I do not see anything wrong with using “inappropriate and inlammatory rhetoric” to make a point. In fact, liberals need to use a FUCKLOAD OF A LOT MORE inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric.
In fact, this greatly understates the case. Liberals have been so out-inflamed and out-outraged by the crazed rhetoric of the far right that liberals need to start using bomb-throwing arsonist-style rhetoric. When the goddamn Republicans come out with outrageous inappropriate rhetoric and say insane inflammatory shit like “Refusing to extend tax breaks to the millionaires will destroy capitalism as we know it,” the liberals need to pull out even more inflammatory rhetoric and say “Capitalism as we know it is shit and needs to die and we need to hang the millionaires from their necks until they’re dead, financially speaking, to restore America.” Robert Reich has been saying that shit and so has Bill Moyers, and the rest of the liberals need to start doing that.
Being “appropriate” and “non-inflammatory” doesn’t work when the other side is screaming crazed lies like Ann Coulter’s assertion that liberals need to be killed to physically intimidate them and Glenn Beck’s hysterical claim that “liberalism is a cancer that has to be cut out of the body politic.”
Liberals need to start getting real goddamn inappropriate and massively inflammatory. Because the insane rhetoric of the other side is winning this debate — the debate is now all about how large of a tax cut we should give to the millionaires, and nobody’s talking about even extending unemployment benefits.
Why is that, ABL?
I’ll tell you why…it’s because the inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric of the far right is blasting the mild reasonable rhetoric of the liberals right out of the debating arena. When one person calls the other side misguided and the other side calls you a traitor, people tend to notice the charge of treason and ignore the “misguided” epithet, okay?
Liberals need to start calling Republicans traitors and whores and they need to start calling people like John Cole quislings and cowards and bootlickers and crypto-fascists Lein Riefenstahl wannabes when people like John Cole support Obama’s advocacy of torture and ordering the murder of Americans who have never been charged with a crime, and Obama’s advocacy of extending tax cuts to the wealthy, and Obama’s insane onoing never-ending wars and Obama’s betrayal of his promises of a transparent government and a return to the rule of law.
When John Cole becomes an apologist for that shit, he’s no better than David Brooks, and everyone ought to call Cole out for that shit. And they ought to do it with the most inappropriate and inflammatory language they can. They ought to ask why Cole doesn’t just join a goddamn torchlight parade for Obama. They ought to ask why Cole doesn’t just wear a fucking monocle and a top hot as long as he’s kissing the billionaires’ asses by supporting Obama’s betrayal of his economic populist promises during the campaign.
People like Greenwald are dead right and they need to get more hardcore and start using even more inappropriate and inflammatory rhetoric, ’cause that’s the only way we’re going to win this debate with the far-right lunatics.
soonergrunt
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Absolutely. This is the heart of the matter. They both think that because they have some following on the nets (from hard work well done in days long past) that they can act like the fucking cool kids in junior high.
Anya
@Dennis G.: This million times! Thank you Dennis!
@liberal:
No doubt he is in the Geraldine Ferraro wing of the Democratic Party.
junebug
@Dennis G.:
As a matter of fact, Mona Holland was making this point on GG’s blogspot blog back in 2005/2006
alwhite
OH MY GAWD! SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET COMPARED SOME BLOGGER TO A NAZI! SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET QUICK SO IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN!
I actually enjoy a lot, but not all, of what GG writes he is right way too often to ignore. I have no idea why he would pull out a nuke over this, it makes no sense. He needs to be condemned but the hysteria here is a bit over the top – on both sides.
Dennis G.
@El Tiburon:
Dude, I stand by my point. The disagreement about policy does not justify the hatred, especially when a lot of fucking progress is actually being made despite the wedging on that he doesn’t do this or that specific thing in this or that specific way on this or that specific timetable.
Your comment underscores my point. I think you have some policy disagreements, but your hatred is a bit irrational. I expect that will set you off, but then again what else would an irrational bloke do.
Chill.
Cheers
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Then write about it on your own fucking blog! Jeez you are dense. It’s her fucking blog! If you got a problem with what she does then put up your own fucking blog to counter it. If she thinks your comments are not appropriate for her site then that’s her decision to make. Quit whining about it.
The
needobsession of the anti-Obama nuts to counter anything positive about Obama is just fucking stupid.You Don't Say
@Zuzu’s Petals: I love that green wool coat she has on. Am I Eva Braun?
somethingblue
@Michael Finn: That’s just silly. Blackwaterdog’s (obviously genuine) adoration of Obama reminds me of the kind of adoration the North Korean regime likes to represent its citizens as feeling toward Kim Jong-Il. I haven’t accused either Blackwaterdog or Obama of starving millions of their own people.
ChrisNYC
ABL — I’m with you. Glad to see this on BJ, considering the blanket GG love that a lot of FPers seem to engage in.
Another episode of “I get to do what I freak out on other people for doing,” brought to you by Glenn Greenwald.
BR
@Dennis G.:
As usual, very well said.
tomvox1
@mclaren:
\
You are talking completely out of your colon. Can you please site one example of Cole supporting your view of Obama’s positions on these issues? Cause I read BJ everyday and it simply has not happened. In fact, the opposite is true: On civil liberties, Cole is firmly in Greenwald’s corner. On tax cuts for the ultra-rich, Cole has pleaded with the Dems to bring it to a vote. So that would make you a fucking liar.
Put up or shut up, Mr. Pure.
Zuzu's Petals
@Dennis G.:
Excellent points. Personally, I don’t see it as racist coming from the likes of GG, but it is irrational.
Dennis G.
@mclaren:
Good luck with that whole Pol Pot shit. Calls for political purity purges are generally bad ideas. They usually end up in rivers of blood.
Get a grip. If you persist in calling for neo-fascist bullshit I think you will find that most folks will take a stand against you.
Take a chill pill for fucks sake.
Cheers
BR
@Michael Finn:
Actually, he pulled a non-apology apology that he’d probably call out someone else for if they did it. But since he did it, it’s okay.
WyldPirate
@tomvox1:
I think I said exactly the same thing in my post above.
I’ve got no problem with this Blackwaterdog person having a captioned photo-fetish of Obama and his family. None whatsoever.
At the same time, she put it up on the web for the whole world to see. It’s not like it’s a private section of Facebook or something. Why can’t Greenwald criticize it as being a creepy fetish? It’s his opinion. He saw something on the internet and he commented on it. Is he supposed to take the time and go see what her hit statistics are? I see where he got that opinion. It does appear a bit creepy to me too. That’s my opinion.
sgrAstar
@WyldPirate: Greenwald can say whatever he wants to- who would dispute that- but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a bloviating douchebag. Greenwald passed his sell-by date a long time ago.
Lavocat
@El Tiburon: What he said.
snarkyspice
@WyldPirate:
So?
There are a lot of odd and interesting people in the world. For GG to stoop so low as to attack one of them for, I don’t know .. liking someone he hates? … is beyond normal human decency.
I used to admire GG but then I realized 4 things. 1) He is completely humorless, and I hate people without a sense of humor. 2) He is an awful writer – dude, learn to edit! 3) He really is unreasonable when to comes to Obama. Whatever the opposite of an OBot is, that’s what he is. 4) He’s utterly clueless about politics.
After all that sunk in, I realized that I feel about him the way he feels about the President. Only now with this latest douchebaggery, it turns out I feel even worse than that.
Ugh. Make the nasty man go away.
Zuzu's Petals
@You Don’t Say:
Definitely suspicious.
Johannes
@Belvoir: Where did he apologize? He “rescinded” his comparison. How very nice. But no apology. GG has a lot on the ball, and he can be both trenchant and thorough. But he is also far, far too quick to attack people he doesn’t know personally in a very personal way, absent provocation or need.
Which is a pity, because he has a fine legal mind, and can give a righteous rant. But he needs to look in the mirror and say “I can be wrong” about 5,000 times a day, for at least a decade.
Thanks ABL for calling this example to our attention.
valdivia
@Dennis G.:
This. This. This.
You so well sum up how I have been feeling for a while. The constant anger and outrage & over the top hatred of the man really baffles me.
And I also love Mrs. O, fun site.
mclaren
@Dennis G.:
If most folks on this blog take a stand against me, that’s a reliable indicator that I’m speaking the truth. Good deal. Bring it on.
Thank you. That’s proof positive that I’m not being inflammatory and inappropriate enough. So let’s ratchet it up a notch.
People like John Cole have their hearts in the right place, but if things keep going the way they’re going, this country is headed straight towards a Brazil-like society, where 1% of the population live comfortable lives and everyone else lives in a fucking favela with tin roofs and sewage running through the center of dirt streets. And in that kind of society, guys like John Cole who had their hearts in the right place but just couldn’t quite manage to take a stand against lying sacks of shit like Obama the Betrayer who ran on truth and justice and returning the middle class to power in America and then governed by crushing the middle class and elevating lies and torture and government-sanctioned murder of innocent Americans to the level of a religion, will be among the first to get hanged from the lampposts by enraged mobs who won’t take it anymore.
And you know what?
I won’t shed a tear.
How’s that for taking a chill pill, buckaroo?
Michael Finn
Oh, of course. I must have misread you as you misread me. I wasn’t saying you weren’t comparing Obama or blckwaterdog to the Nazi’s or the North Koreans, I said that you comparing her to just a cog in their machines, you know, that enabled them to kill millions. We aren’t leading people who are reading the comments (all three of us) with our bullshit.
Face it, we are all assholes and we are arguing over who smells the most like shit.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@snarkyspice:
This reminds me of a Bobcat Goldthwait bit.
junebug
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I refer you to the “clip art image” at the top of this post.
BR
@mclaren:
I’m guessing Greenwald lives among that 1% in Brazil…
magurakurin
To me, what I see in this is that Greenwald has lost himself in the Internet. He, like me, is an ex-pat. As I understand it he lives the majority of the year in Brazil. The Internet gives ex-pats an opportunity to stay connected in a way never before possible, but it is also, something of an illusion. As much contact as we feel to have, we are still living outside of the daily flux of culture of our home countries and the Internet does not provide a genuine level of participation. It also distorts the relative importance and popularity of various ideas, trends and such because it creates such powerful echo chambers in places. Greenwald spends a great deal of time on line and he has obviously mistaken a place like the DKOS for a genuine representation of anything other than the DKOS itself.
How many Americans even know what the DKOS is? How many fewer would understand GOS as a reference to it? Out of those how many would know what BWD meant? And out of those how many would be a “fan?” Compared to the population of the United States the number is without question smaller than the number who thinks Elvis is still alive(well I suppose that comparison is a bit dated, but still…)
BWD loves Obama, blah, blah…yeah, we get that. That isn’t the point. The point is that Greenwald looks like a douche for doing this if only because BWD is so, so, so unimportant in the larger scheme of things. Glenn, meet Shark. Jump when ready, Gridley.
BR
Two years ago a friend emailed me asking if I read Greenwald. Here’s what I said:
Some things never change.
cat48
€$$$@liberal:
Seem to be quite a few that “feel that Obama is destroying the Democratic party” like your Dad……..What exactly has he done that’s so damaging? Just curious. Does your Dad plan to primary him like everyone else who feels that way?? How exactly has he defiled the friggin party???? Really would like to know what this person has done to your Dads party??????
Nick
@mclaren:
Then Glenn Greenwald should like it just fine.
Michael Finn
@mclaren: Ah… So watching millions of people die won’t bring you to tears because you were RIGHT.
This is why I have started to hate the left as much as the right. You are starting to cut yourselves off from the debate because you believe that if things aren’t done your way then to hell with it all.
Building things, such as a competent political structure, takes lifetimes of effort. President Obama was not the end to the old ways, he was the stepping stone onto the political future of this country. He and his party delivered health care reform that will save approximately 45,000 lives a year. Think about that: 45K lives a year. They did so even though it cost a large portion of them their jobs.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@junebug:
Unresponsive. Are you feeling alright?
Nick
@liberal:
Not surprised that anyone who says “A good Republican is a dead Republican” wouldn’t be so hot on Obama.
BR
@cat48:
You know, I think that phenomenon is just a cyclic thing. There was someone at dkos who wrote an ignored diary making an analogy to the stock market. (Bear with me.) Oftentimes a good investing strategy is to buy when everyone is universally saying “sell” and vice versa. The same may sometimes be true in politics, because the “Obama sucks” storyline will get old soon enough, become the new normal, etc. and the media and population will look for a new storyline “Obama takes charge again”, etc.
It happened often during the campaign, with everyone universally saying Obama’s campaign was dead in September 2007, soon after which he turned it around at the JJ dinner and closed strong in Iowa. Same thing happened in August/September 2008, when everyone was saying he was being crushed by the “celebrity” attacks, the GOP convention, etc.
I’m not making a projection here, just an observation.
mclaren
@Dennis G.:
Show me the post where John Cole demands that Obama be impeached for war crimes.
Isn’t one.
You’re a liar. And I’ve just proven you a liar.
Show me the post where John Cole demands that Obama be impeached for continuing Bush’s torture — the second secret prison at Bagram, we now know, continues to torture prisoners. Obama has sanctioned torture. He needs to be impeached and then dragged in chains before the international tribunal at The Hague and tried for crimes against humanity. Along with the drunk-driving C student and Cheney, of course, and torturing genocidal “generals” (hired killers) like Stanley McChrystal.
Show me the post where Cole proposes that, or stand revealed as an ignorant liar.
Oh. Wait. You can’t.
You’re lying out your ass. You’re an ignorant liar, an incompetent liar, and a cowardly liar. Crawl back under your rock, you’re done here.
If you don’t take a goddamn stand against evil, you support evil. Obama must be impeached. The drunk-driving C student and Cheney must be hauled in front of a court and tried for crimes against humanity.
We can’t stop demanding this. We can’t stop agitating for it.
No matter how many weary pundits roll their eyes, no matter how many thuggish bootlickers sneer and snicker and giggle “take a chill pill,” torture and summary execution of innocent Americans and the mass murder of innocent Afhgans and Pakistanis and Iraqis (more than one MILLION Iraqis dead so far, and still counting) are not negotiable. These are heinous crimes. We’re talking about evil in its purest form.
Impeach Obama! Return the rule of law to America!
If you’re not speaking out for this, you condemn yourself to supporting Obama’s crimes, and that makes you an enemy of humanity.
Am I getting your attention now, kiddies?
Am I being inappropriate and inflammatory enough…?
junebug
Glenn Greenwald did much what this wing nut talk radio type did. Someone sent him and email and he ran with it and used it to insinuate that the president did something wrong and insulting, all the while being completely wrong.
I don’t care how bad it gets with the democrats, I will not become just like the republicans and the wingnuts to fix it.
That’s just stupid.
Michael Finn
@BR: Hey, I dislike the guy as much as anybody possibly can, except for the Tea Baggers. I know it was half-assed, get off the coach before I put a gun on your head, approach but as one lazy bum to another, I can respect such a act.
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
Look, ABL. I’e got no hard feelings towards you. I defend your right to say what you did about GG. I was simply trying to make fun of the fact that you went overboard in your criticism and the leap you made of the Obama to Hitler analogy. I thought you were dead wrong in your interpretation of the analogy GG made. The tell was in the title of your post and the portion of the paragraph I took and quoted from your post.
Here is an example:
Reifenstahl is to Hitler as Blackwaterdog is to Obama.
If someone knows that Riefenstahl was a visual arts propagandist to a former world leader, Adolf Hitler, they could assume that Blackwaterdog is a visual arts propagandist to the world leader Barack Obama.
What that doesn’t mean –and what GG most certainly didn’t say— was that because he made that analogy that he was comparing Hitler to Bush. You obviously took it that way because that is what you said in your post. You also seemed pissed because GG had criticized Obama in the past because–you said so in you post. That is why I snarked on you like I did.
I just don’t get why GG is supposed to be so concerned about the level of traffic for someone’s blog when he makes a comment. I’ve seen all sorts of big-time bloggers make snarky comments about something some dumbass Bush supporter said. There was much mocking and laughter.
If you’re going to be worried about what someone says about your blog, make people sign up for a password and limit VIEWING access. Otherwise, put your “man-pants” on and grow some thick skin.
martha
@magurakurin: Thank you, this is a great point. I live in the U.S., but in a “flyover” state, and I can tell you that people in the blogosphere who are coasties (either right or left) who never leave their bastions of liberalism and lattes have no clue either how most of America lives, thinks, or functions.
It’s not always pretty and it can be depressing as hell, but it’s a good reminder of what’s real and what we face. It’s all of these people that the President is focusing on. Not armchair warriors sitting on the couch with their laptops fighting (metaphorically) over who’s more pure.
Dennis G.
@mclaren:
It ain’t fantasy politics mate.
You remind me of a fella one of my brothers used to know. He told me of that fella that “his mind is made up… that is to say that is doesn’t exist”.
Good luck with your rich and active fantasy life. And thanks for sharing. And thanks for letting folks know that when they see your name they can safely assume that pointless gibberish will follow.
That really was mighty white of you.
Cheers
jeff
No disrespect to ABL, but I was really hoping this shit wouldn’t show up here. Whatever whoever said, it’s just going to lead to endlessly boring sniping. Daily Kos is far worse than useless, in my opinion…let’s let that sinkhole be the place for this stuff.
junebug
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
As I initially said, I am amused. What are you?
mclaren
@Michael Finn:
That’s a bizarre way of saying “if we don’t return the rule of law to America and eliminate abuses of Presidential power by Barack Obama that go beyond even the usurpations and wanton tortures and murders of William the Conquerer, America will descend into barbarism,” isn’t it?
Take a look at this 50th Anniversary social studies symposium: Is there hope for the rule of law in America? and tell me I’m over the top.
Obama has not just wiped his ass on the constitution of the united states, he’s thrown out a thousand years of civil law going all the way back to the magna carta. Obama has regressed 1100 years even to powers beyond the tyrannies of William the Conquerer. Obama has claimed powers not even the most barbarous chieftains in medieval times never claimed. Obama asserts that he not only has to right to torture and murder innocent Americans against no crimes are ever alleged, but that he does not even have to give anyone an accounting of why he did it.
That is tyranny. That is barbarism.
In fact, I’ve greatly understated the tyrannies and usurpations of Obama. My statements on Obama’s atrocities have been far too mild, vastly too limited.
cat48
@Dennis G.:
It indeed is a strange development the way Obama is hated by the left and I think it was done deliberately. He has been attacked relentlessly since his first months in office. I have a lot of pride just because he’s our first black president and that makes him sorta special to me and my family. It’s been hurtful to watch it all develop & now they plan to primary him.
BR
@jeff:
I guess I kinda agree with you, even though I’ve participated in this thread. Maybe I should start posting recipes in reply to some of our troll-y commenters?
Martin
@El Tiburon:
I’m not sure how they are deserved. The recent criticism of the left are that they have blown the tax cut extension fight. That fight isn’t even remotely over. We heard the same thing over healthcare with everyone having declared, repeatedly, that HCR would never pass and that the Dems have failed.
The problem as I see it is there is the outcome of an action and the optics. I care about the outcome. I believe that in the end, the outcome will overpower the optics, mainly because most voters don’t see the optics at all. They just don’t care about the fight. They don’t care if the Democrats advance a mile into Republican territory or take a key objective. They just want to get through life without too much pain or hassle, and the outcome is what will drive that. So, when Obama does good things, I’ll always reward those. When he does bad things, I’ll note those as well, but I won’t bemoan the optics too much. Broder will write what he writes, and it doesn’t matter what Obama does, he can’t change that.
The harsh reality is that people care more about healthcare than they do about gays in the military. They care more about how much they pay in taxes, and less about what someone else pays in taxes.
The bulk of the criticism of Obama, as far as I’ve seen, is that he’s not exacting enough pain out of the opposition – not that he’s failing to achieve. A lot of us don’t care about winning, we care about progress – and we’re getting that. And in the places we aren’t getting that progress, it’s not because of Obama – it’s because of how Congress operates. Obama didn’t fail DADT – the Senate rules and the GOP did. They’re also the one failing tax cuts. And yet in spite of that, there’s indications there that the Dems are willing to go to the mat over the tax cuts – that they’ll allow all of them to lapse and make the GOP negotiate up from the old rates.
But I’m curious to know what Obama could have done to get the Senate to pass the House’s tax plan, and I’m curious why the 53-38 ‘failure’ on the House tax plan should be ascribed to him.
somethingblue
@Michael Finn: It’s possible I agree with you on some of that, although I’m not sure I really understand it.
+3? ;-)
Michael Finn
@mclaren: Just so we are clear; you are alright with letting millions of Americans die under a political system that a large portion of them have no control, but by GOD we need to impeach Obama for War Crimes because he, um, let a military base report to Amnesty International about prisoners that had previously been unreported. That’ll show ’em!
Um, having a black president bring brought to the Hague in chains could have some decidedly negative effects here in the States to the point of civil war.
AliceBlue
For WyldPirate and everyone else who thinks BWD’s blog is “creepy”, here’s an idea: IGNORE IT!
There. See how easy that is?
WyldPirate
@sgrAstar:
I don’t think I disagree with the fact that GG is a bloviating douchebag. He’s a talented researcher and writer, but he is just a little too dense for me to read at times. He takes a topic and demonstrates his point and drills deeper and deeper and deeper. It gets to be like pulling wings off of flies and dissecting the veins out.
Sly
Clearly all the Gbots in this thread need to get over their orgiastic and cult-like obsession with Greenwald. Can’t criticize something Dear Leader writes, now can we?
CAN WE?
BR
@cat48:
They won’t primary him. I mean, sure FDL would want to but:
a) they won’t be able to find a plausible candidate
b) the party apparatus (the behind the scenes bigwigs that still have serious influence) won’t allow it because it’d hurt the party and
c) both the apparatus and most Dem politicians know that if such a primary were successful they’d destroy the one reason Dems ever manage to win elections – minority voters.
Martin
@mclaren: So, Obama is the greatest tyrant and barbarian of the last 1100 years?
Yeah, no irrational hatred of Obama from the left. Way to make your case.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mclaren:
Fix’t.
soonergrunt
@Dennis G.: People like mclaren are why I like and admire cleek so much.
Is it any wonder why typing “clee” into google will autocomplete as “Cleek pie filter”
And by the way, replacing mclaren’s random spewing with random statements regarding the love of pie has only made him/her sound less insane. S/He actually makes more sense, now.
mclaren
@Dennis G.:
Intermingled in your insults and vacuous jibes, I can’t find any legal or moral defense of Obama’s decision to continue torturing innocent Afghans and Iraqis.
Where is it?
Where’s your moral defense of torture?
I’m waiting…tick…tick…tick…
Amid all your angry empty words, I see no legal or moral defense of Obama’s death warrant against an American citizen who had never been charged with any crime.
Where is it?
Where’s your legal and moral defense of Obama ordering the extrajudicial murder of an innocent American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki?
I’m still waiting. The clock is ticking.
Do you want to address the issue, or do you want to continue to scream hysterical insults in the vain hope that we’ll ignore Obama’s unconstitutional tortures and murders of American who’ve never been accused of a crime?
Well…we all know the answer to that. You have nothing to back up your support for Obama’s extrajudicial murders and his continuation of murder and his war crime drone strikes which mainly kill women and children in wedding parties in Afghanistan.
So since you haven’t anything to support you unconscionable and treasonous advocacy of torture and murder and genocide, you call me names.
Keep screaming those vacuous insults. You illustrate the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of your support for Obama ever more clearly. We recognize you with increasing clarity as just another little Eichmann.
Am I being inappropriate and inflammatory enough NOW, kiddies?
Michael Finn
@mclaren:
That may be the most stupid thing I have read here tonight and I read a TV guide, a few minutes ago, in my bathroom involving Michael Jackson’s expensive funeral because I refuse to throw it out because then I’d have nothing to read.
eemom
ABL, this post kicks ass. And I do hope you continue to stick around. But frankly if I were you, I’d have fucking had it with the bullshit here by now.
Especially if this
means what I think it does.
John is seriously pathetic when it comes to Hamsher. No matter how craven a backstabbing sellout she became during HCR, he always insisted she “wanted what’s best for the country.”
When she openly ridiculed him a while back over her exhumation of that poor old “public option” corpse, he fought back for a while……but evidently, something got to him, because now he plops a big wet linky kiss on her ass everytime she says something halfway sane — even though it’s invariably some obvious tripe that everyone else in the blogosphere has already said. (Targeting Social Security for deficit reduction is fucked up?? Fer realz?? Wow, Jane sure deserves credit for thinking THAT one up.)
I’ve never bought the Sam-and-Diane theory of the Cole-Hamsher relationship, so maybe it’s some A-List Blogger Secret Society membership that’s at stake.
Or, maybe he’s just scared of her.
Whatever. If the price of posting here was that YOU of all people have to tiptoe around for fear of offending HER insufferable ass, no way is it worth it.
cat48
@BR:
Yes, I’ve seen it a lot on blogs too. It was jarring to see an oped in Kaplan Post demanding that he be primaried on Sat. for the good of the party. It sounded really petty. Just stuff flying everywhere out there. Oh well, guess it’ll be the “new norm” for a while.
WyldPirate
@AliceBlue:
Hey. Never been to her site b4 and will never go back. I went there to see why GG said what he said.
When I saw her site, I agreed with GG. She is obsessed with Obama and his family.
If this person had pictures of George Bush with the comments that she had, I bet this site would have a whole different attitude. Everyone would be snarking and laughing their asses off at it.
seems to me that a lot of people here are a being a tad bit hypocritical.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@junebug:
Not following the bizarre conversation you’re having with yourself in your own head, that’s what I am. Nighty-night.
jwb
@cat48: I don’t know that it was done deliberately, but it is certainly the case that a large number of the Left never trusted Obama, weren’t about to give him the benefit of the doubt, indeed were going to be looking for signs of betrayal. On the other hand, it would be interesting to know where the dissident Left is getting its funding from these days.
Michael Finn
@somethingblue: That’s alright. The fact that I’m half drunk and you can even make something out of that give me and my liver hope for the future.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cat48: “What exactly has he done that’s so damaging?”
He’s Presidentin’ while Black. In many jurisdictions of these United States that is enough to get you pulled over and beaten by the cops.
Sometimes you don’t even need to be President to have this happen!
soonergrunt
@mclaren, 241:
I agree, Brother/Sister! I agree.
John Cole
McClaren you half-wit (and I’m being charitable by a half), I’ve opposed everything you listed, publicly, on this blog.
Christ.
BR
@cat48:
Still, despite the noise, it won’t happen. While I can’t even believe I’m saying this, Hillary Clinton will have his back. (Of course Joe Biden will, but that’s not that surprising.) Biden and Clinton will -twist- break some arms of anyone even daring to primary Obama, so the only type of candidate they might get is someone who’s out on the fringes of the party. (Grayson is the only one who comes to mind, but I don’t think he’d do it.)
Now what I do see as more likely is someone like Bloomberg (though maybe not Bloomberg himself) running on a socially liberal, isolationist, fiscal austerity platform.
mclaren
@Martin:
Evidently you need a reading comprehension refresher course.
Obama has usurped powers and ordered atrocities and tyrannies that even William the Conquerer refused to order.
Obama has ordered barbarisms seldom seen in the last 1100 years. There’s a difference between the kind of barbarities Obama has ordered,and the quantity of barbarities he has perpetrated.
For sheer quantity of barbarities, clearly Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler are in the lead. But for the quality of barbarities, yes, Obama is very clearly in their league.
Ordering the torture of a few hundred innocent people is as heinous as ordering the torture of thousands or tens of thousands.
Ordering the extrajudicial murder of one innocent man is as grotesquely unjust and as unacceptable in a civil society as ordering the extrajudicial murder of millions.
You need to learn the difference between quantity and quality. Obama trails in quantity of atrocities, but he’s clear neck-and-neck with Pol Pot and Stalin in the quality of his atrocities.
And I stand by that statement, because it’s a matter of simple documented fact.
El Tiburon
@Dennis G.:
Nothing irrational about many of the policies and actions by Obama to hate. I hated them when Bush did them and I continue to hate the, now.
Instead of a transformational presidency as he promised, it has turned out to be transactional. This country was poised for a new direction and a new hope. Obama squandered that. He chose not to fight and stand on principle. Sure, the dems in congress are just as culpable, but it starts at the top.
I’ve gone for absolutely voting door him again to waiting and seeing how it goes. As it is, his presidency is strengthening the republicans worldview and that is just not acceptable.
So to call it my disgust irrational is simply wrong.
Michael Finn
@jwb: I’m a member of the left that has never trusted anybody and never will; stupid horror movies of the late 1980’s. I sent the man $120 out of my paycheck. I don’t want to trust him, I just want my money’s worth.
J
Surely this is a tempest in a Teapot. How on earth anyone can read the original ‘tweet’ as saying that Blackwaterdog is a Nazi defies belief. Greenwald is saying, admittedly in a way that is over the top and quite possibly unfair, and at a minimum inflammatory (his word) and distracting, that Blackwaterdog depicts Obama in the same propagandistic hero-worshipping spirit in which LR depicted the big H. That doesn’t mean that Obama is Hitler or that Blackwaterdog’s values are a Nazi’s.
So far I mean to be defending Greenwald, but I think he’s still in the wrong. To adopt an uncritically hero-worshipping attitude toward Obama, though a mistake, is one of an entirely different order from hero-worshipping a monster like Hitler.
mclaren
@John Cole:
Have you stood tall and demanded that Obama be impeached for his crimes?
Yes or no.
Put up or shut up.
Folks, this is how you get peoples’ attention — by being inappropriate and inflammatory. If the Democrats did more of this, the goddamn Republicans would be begging for mercy and they’d be losing the public debate catastrophically.
You can’t get anywhere by mildly whimpering, “Oooh, ooh, I…uh…disagree with you about torture.”
FlipYrWhig
I’d like to back up to this earlier comment.
@gizmo:
Um, Glenn Greenwald is a guy with a blog and opinions. Who’s he “up against”? Who’s he “fighting his ass off” against? He hates Obama just like roughly half the country, and before that he hated Bush just like roughly half the country. He risks nothing and suffers not a whit for his work.
I mean, I’ve never much liked his attitude and his pomposity, while I respect that he generally goes looking for facts (although IMHO what he does with those facts is often squirrelly). But the thing I _really_ don’t care for is this sense of his importance. He’s not Julian Assange.
BR
@FlipYrWhig:
This.
Darkrose
I do hope Glenn never stops by LiveJournal, because the Obama Daily comm would make his head explode. Which would be a pity, because then he couldn’t read the Rahmbama slash fic comms.
The Republic of Stupidity
@soonergrunt:
And THAT’S definitely the moose turd pie… straight from the oven and still steaming…
Jay
Well, at least now ABL can join ED on my list of frontpager posts to skip. What, exactly, does Cole think she brings to this blog other than knee-jerk nasty screeds and constant drama? Hasn’t she done like 4 GBCW comments already?
jwb
@Martin: If the story in the Times can be believed, it’s looking like that whatever tax bill passes will have to pass with a large number of GOP votes because at this point there are a sufficient number of Dems who won’t vote for extending all the tax cuts. I’m not sure what that means in terms of governance, optics, whatnot. I don’t even know who ends up “owning” this. But I do know that it’s most certainly good news for John McCain.
A. Lurker
The Internet Is Serious Business, people. Serious Fucking Business. So when one person posts a list of pictures on a blog as an argument and another person calls her Leni Rifenstahl on Twitter, we must all take sides or else the world is going to fucking end in a blaze of smoke and fire and colored lasers that go “pew pew pew” when you fire them even though lasers by themselves technically don’t make a sound but dammit it sounds cool in a kitschy way.
Considering my hometown team got stomped by the Giants today I’m surprised at how un-enraged I am right now. Maybe like many of the ol’ Democrats I’ve just become numb to the latest manufactured outrage. There are too many other things IRL (as the cool kids say) to be pissed off about.
Here, listen to some calming Japanese music video instead.
SIA
@ruemara: __
__Exactly! There were a couple pretty significant news stories at BWD’s blog that I hadn’t heard about, and I’m pretty tuned in to the media.
And anyway, her website cheered me up, while GG’s depresses me. Guess I’m just shallow.
Michael Finn
@mclaren: Wow. I’m sorry, but your stupidity has made this too painful to read.
I’m pretty sure that Slavery, which let millions of innocent men and women be tortured, branded, and then treated as property is worse than what Obama has done.
The whole Spanish Inquisition, in which Scientists, Philosophers, and thinkers were tortured, burned alive, and tens of thousands of people butchured for suspected Anti-Catholic feelings was a tad more insane.
The whole Spanish invasion of the American Continents, in which entire shelves of population of people died, may be a bit bigger.
The French Revolution, where the machines to kill people became, the guillotine, so dull that people were required to go and get others to jump on it so that it would go through their entire neck, may possibly have been worse than what Obama has done in your eyes.
Either deal with reality or don’t, but you are now smelling the worst.
cat48
@BR:
soonergrunt
@The Republic of Stupidity: And he or she is, in fact, in a pants-shitting rage, just as I predicted.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@jeff:
I am glad it showed up here. I wanted to comment on this but I quit posting at the GOS back in 2005 and I refuse to post anything at the shoutdown shithole that place has become.
Topics are diverse here, as are the opinions. There are no TU’s running around acting as mind police here, we are free to post, read and comment to our hearts content. This topic is just fine by me.
FlipYrWhig
@jwb:
That’s what they do to prove their cred. If you support a politician, you become part of a corrupt system, so you have to maintain cynicism at all times lest you get captured by what you have spent your life opposing. Supporting politicians is naive. Hating them is hardcore and real. And then to prove that you’re hardcore and real and lefter than left, you have to show that you’re not so naive as to _like_ a political figure in power.
It makes life easier, always hating everything. Look at Alexander Cockburn, pissed off at everything that has ever happened in the world since the day he was born.
Lolis
@cat48:
Gimme a break. Obama is destroying the party? People refuse to acknowledge that Obama is still more liberal than at least half of the elected Democrats, especially in the Senate. To blame any type of party demise on anyone, one should blame the whole party, not the person who gets stuck having to sell the less than ideal legislation he can actually get passed. Obama doesn’t fight battles he knows he can’t win. Is that a problem? I think so. Does that mean he has destroyed the party? Hell no.
I know the legislative branch only exists in theory to a lot of liberals. They think it a branch that Obama has magical control over. Maybe liberal’s Dad should call Joe Manchin and all the other Dems who ran against Obama and Pelosi and tell them they are destroying the party. Fuck all you idiots.
El Tiburon
@Martin:
You cant swing a dead cat in the lefty blogosphere without seeing harsh criticisms of Obama – and most of not all are very well justified.
You can take your optics and other such nonsense and stuff ’em in a sock. If the republicans had just one decent contender, they might take back the presidency as well in 2012. Whose fault is that?
iriedc
Dropped GG from my twitter feed last week, before this mess. He’s developed a huge “Obama can do no right” blindspot. I’ll let the internets tell me when he’s written something worth reading.
D'Angelo
Shorter Glenn Greenwald:
N****r woman is proud of N****r President? This is an outrage!
BR
@Lolis:
I think you may have misunderstood cat48.
Loneoak
I’m kinda late to the discussion, but I think there’s a point that hasn’t been made which I think is awfully important.
Propaganda comes from the state, not citizens. Lets assume the terribly offensive analogy between Obama and Hitler holds, then BWD would be like a German citizen who put up nice pictures of Hitler on a bulletin board. Furthermore, Riefenstahl’s work was made in the service of a genocidal regime. The worst you can say about BWD is she’s a fanboy of an ineffectual, corporatist Democrat.
GG’s comparison between BWD is twice as offensive for how lazy it is.
Hob
@mclaren: There are three problems with your “if everyone else says I’m crazy, I must be right” theory:
1. About two-thirds of the time, for whatever reason, the things you say make sense. You’re not always nice, but you’re usually sane. And guess what: people here don’t have a problem with you then! And you seem to be able to deal with people here like human beings too, at those times, and you have interesting things to say, and people don’t call you crazy. So does that mean you must have been wrong on all those occasions?
2. Imagine that somehow an obnoxious stupid crazy person, who shares none of your fine qualities, finds this blog and starts posting comments that are just no damn good. Most people will tell him he’s full of shit, and so will you. So, does that make him right?
3. In the very same comment where you needled ABL for using a potentially confusing sentence structure, you made a dumb-ass mistake: the blogger she and Greenwald are both talking about is not John Cole. No one else on this thread made that mistake. You just felt like ranting about Cole and you turned off your brain in the process.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Darkrose:
A former co-worker used to talk about (without any graphic detail) Worf-slash-Wesley Crusher fiction. Never read any, but the mere knowledge of its existence has disturbed me in ways I can’t describe. “Rahmbama slash fic” takes me to the same place.
Allan
This was a pretty interesting thread until mclaren Greenwalded it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@eemom:
This kind of bothers me too. I may have misunderstood John in the past but I thought he got people on the front page and let them loose, so to say. I didn’t know there were preconditions for ’employment’, not that he would be wrong for having them if that was his choice.
It just seems at odds with his ‘style’. I didn’t know there were Sacred Cows here.
Mooo!
Anya
@WyldPirate: My God! How many times are you going to repeat your baseless argument? Read this and learn @Dennis G.:
Jules
GG is a douchebag.
Who knew?
WyldPirate
@mclaren:
Damn skippy, mcclaren.
This whole thread is illustrative of what a cult of personality some of the Obots have become. Nothing bad can be uttered about Obama.
ABL totally flipped out and went off and accused GG of making a Obama=Hitler analogy. Something that GG must assuredly didn’t do and something ABL should fucking retract.
Then all the usual Obot lemmings fall into line to express their outrage at GG- for making a pretty damned valid point which they would have had a hard time arguing about if they just took two minutes and went to the site that GG and ABL were talking about and looked at it.
But what do end up with instead? Some of the same people who I used to come over here and read so passionately—and rightly– raising forty-seven kinds of hell about the illegal and immoral shit that the Bush administration did ignoring the same sort of shit out of the Obama administration. To top it off, thye berate and character assassinate those that have the temerity that their Emperor is missing some of his garments as well.
FlipYrWhig
@Loneoak: Well, Greenwald has a tendency to think that everyone who is not Greenwald is co-opted, bought and paid for. It’s part of his self-image as the lone voice in the wilderness crying out for justice.
Martin
@mclaren:
This must not exist.
Do you have any evidence that Obama has sought to violate his own EO, or that he has overlooked violations of his EO?
From the 9/18/2001 AUMF:
I think it’s widely accepted that Al Qaeda ‘planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001’. Further, Anwar al-Awlaki has admitted to being part of Al Qaeda. His citizenship status is superceded by his enemy combatant status.
That’s pretty much the narrowest possible interpretation of the first AUMF, as well, and one that I’ve never seen anyone credibly argue against.
Do you believe that he targeted those sites because they were were wedding parties? There’s collateral damage in every conflict. Even in police actions there’s collateral damage. That’s unfortunate and unavoidable, but that’s not the argument you’re making. You’re saying that Obama has engaged in a war on weddings. That’s an extraordinary claim which you need to provide proof for.
cat48
@BR:
A 3rd party like Bloomberg is not good, but that’s the kind of luck Obama’s had since elected! heh Just not the Party b/c I’ve always been a loyal Dem & I just happen to like the entire Obama family…..that doesn’t normally happen to me. I just accept what’s picked b/c they never got to my state & went with it. Whomever the early states picked, I tried to support.
Chuck told Scarborough one morning that if a 3rd party split the ticket like that w/someone like Romney; Obama might turn the South Obama Blue b/c of the high percentage of blacks that live in those areas so I don’t know how it might work out. I’m from IL but live in SC right now & it is over 30% black so he would need about 33 to 35%. Would be nerveracking. This really upset Joe so they might not have thought about that!
jwb
@WyldPirate: You can snark and laugh your ass off all you want, and if that’s all GG had done we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But if calling someone Lenifuckingriefenstahl is your idea of snark, you are one sick puppy.
SectarianSofa
@Angry Black Lady:
pie filter is good for pirates.
You Don't Say
@WyldPirate: So Greenwald didn’t bring Obama into it. Why did you?
The Republic of Stupidity
@soonergrunt:
I see your point…
***slowly nodding head… thoughtful gaze…***
I see your point…
kwAwk
@Suck It Up!:
People are shitting their pants over it because it reminds them too much of 2008 maybe? Perhaps they don’t want to admit that they too were once that much in love with Obama?
Its thinking like Blackwaterdogs that got Obama elected in teh first place?
In any case BWD’s blog shows nothing other than the fact that she is in love with Obama. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
mclaren
@Michael Finn:
You persist in trying to make the fatally immoral equation that quantity = quality when it comes to atrocities.
This is the fatal slippery slope upon which every tyrant embarks. “We’ll only torturing this one man, it’s for the good of the state.”
Then pretty soon you torture more people…and more people..and eventually you descend into barbarism.
How do you think those millions got tortured to death?
It began with the torture of one person, and people like you justifying it.
Only in quantity. Obama has tortured and murdered fewer people than white Southern slaveowners.
Is that really the campaign slogan you want Democrats to run on in 2012?
OUR GUY TORTURED AND MURDERED FEWER PEOPLE THAN SOUTHERN WHITE SLAVEOWNERS IN THE 1850s!
Yeah. Great rallying cry there, Eichmann.
Only in quantity. The quality of the tortures we’re using is exactly the same as the Spanish Inquisition. Many scholars have pointed out that waterboarding was the most feared and most terrible torture used by the Spanish Inquisition…and that’s what America is now doing,torturing people by drowning them near the point of death…over and over and over and over and over again.
So you’ve lost this one, buckaroo.
Obama and America are continuing to use exactly the same barbaric tortures used by the Spanish Inquisition…the difference is only the number of people we’re torturing, that’s all.
Here’s a little query for you: do you think you could go into court and claim “I only murdered 5 people when I robbed that house, whereas the Spanish Inquisition murdered thousands…so you should let me go!”
You think the judge would buy that argument?
If not, why should we buy that argument about Obama?
You don’t know your history here. Most native Americans in central America died from diseases brought by the conquistadores. So this analogy is invalid.
Before you try these kinds of analogies, you actually have to some knowledge of what you’re talking about. You can’t morally hold someone responsible for giving people a disease when that person is immune to it and we’re talking about people who lived before the germ theory of disease even existed.
Actually, the French revolution was more humane than what Obama has ordered. People in custody in Bagram were beaten until their legs were pulpified. As in “turned to hamburger.” That’s worse than execution by guillotine…a lot worse.
What has happened to you people?
What has gone wrong with all of you?
Don’t you recall that the rule of law is the basis of civilization?
Once you throw out the rule of law, you’ve back in the jungle. It’s pure barbarism. How can any of you defend Obama’s abandonment of the rule of law?
Doesn’t even a single one of you remember Voltaire’s cry “As long as a single man is tortured in a single dungeon, I am not free!”…?
Darkrose
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): My work here is done.
LTMidnight
@WyldPirate: That’s a false equivalency, kid. Your argument only makes valid sense if Michelle Malkin attacked the site of whitefirecat.blogspot.com for posting positive pics of Dubya.
This was a straight up “Left on left” crime.
jwb
@Michael Finn: Man, look at your logic. You’re fucked.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: There’s a _strong_ Glennbot presence in comments here too, which results in people seeing Greenwald pick on another blogger, then whine about being called on it, then do his usual “I just call out people who venerate leaders” dance, and then say that Greenwald was totally right again! because he works his little fingers to the bone! day in, day out, the work of justice is never done! Greenwald is Batman! Or Rorschach.
Zipperupus
In honor of mclaren, we should exhume Truman’s corpse and retroactively impeach him for approving the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Is that inflammatory enough, sunshine?
Lolis
@Lolis:
Big oops, my comments were directed at liberal.
WyldPirate
@eemom:
No it doesn’t. It shows that ABL can’t interpret an analogy worth a fuck and then flies off the handle and accuses someone of doing something that they didn’t do.
It also shows that you’re a brain-dead lemming Obama apologist as well. But you put on that demonstration every time you post.
Martin
@El Tiburon: I didn’t say there weren’t criticisms. I said I didn’t see how they were deserved.
If you hadn’t noticed, if I disagree on someone’s take on something like health care, I usually give them specific evidence for why I think they’re wrong. I’d appreciate the same here. Pick a specific issue and tell me why Obama is deserving of criticism. As an oft-labeled obot, I agree that he is deserving of criticism here, so you should have no trouble digging through that laundry list of failures and telling me exactly what he did wrong, what he should have done, and how that would have generated the outcome you think is appropriate.
Yutsano
Congratulations ABL. You now haz your first 300 comment post. You’re now officially a BJ front pager. I’ll send you a nip of Patron if you agree to defend me against interstate liquor transport laws. :)
LTMidnight
@WyldPirate:
So attacking a Jewish female who lives in Israel for having a pro Obama blog is valid to you. Are you sure it’s not the Obama Derangement Syndrome talking?
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: Due, we get it, you don’t like Obama and think that people who do like Obama express that liking in various abominable acts. Find a new bit.
D'Angelo
Shorter mclaren:
The N****r President is just as bad as all those white people who did stuff? Therefore, I don’t have to worry about racism and my own privilege!
cat48
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I think you might be right! Presiditin While Black has confused some folks I think sometimes. The continuous attacks are like being beatin by the police to me sometimes……just have to back away slowly & take deep breaths…….
Odie Hugh Manatee
@SectarianSofa:
Fix’t.
Allan
@WyldPirate: It appears that the way you determine whether one blogger owes another blogger an apology for something they’ve written is to find out which party Glenn Greenwald is in the dispute, then take his side.
This seems to be fanboy worship rather than a mature, rationale, reasoned perspective.
Perhaps you could set up a wordpress blog full of glamorous photos of and links to the deathless prose of Glenn Greenwald so that the rest of us don’t have to be embarrassed by your wanking off over him?
LTMidnight
And what I would like WyldPirate and the rest of the Obama Derangement Syndrome inflicted moonbats to explain is of the thousands of Pro-Obama websites/fansites out on the internet, why did Grennwald feel the need to attack this one?
Why did Greenwald feel the need to attack a Jewish female by comparing her to a Nazi propagandist?
Why are “non-apology apologies” suddenly okay for some of you guys?
WyldPirate
@LTMidnight:
I see your point, but the real point is that there wasn’t any crime. None.
The closest thing to a crime was the fact that ABL accused GG of comparing Obama to Hitler.
Would you be happy if I were to substitute the freakouts here some have over the FDL crew? Possibly not because to some here they aren’t “True Scotsman”, are they?
soonergrunt
@The Republic of Stupidity: One has to wonder about him/her. I would think s/he would burn out from the constant ragegasm. It’s one reason I pie filtered him/her. And now that he/she posts exclusively about pie, he/she makes a lot more sense, because his/her posts are no longer internally contradictory, and I find myself wanting to ask you all to stop ganging up on him/her just because he/she loves pie enough to post about it all the time.
Martin
@mclaren:
Please list one action Obama has taken that exceeds anything on the public record for Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. I’m not talking quantity. Just one action.
Evidence that he’s done that, please. You have consistently failed to provide any.
He has not done that. He has ordered the targeting of an enemy combatant, someone who has admitted to being an enemy combatant. There’s not even an assertion being made here by the US. The guy posted it on his fucking Facebook page and on YouTube.
mclaren
@Martin:
Now you’ve degraded yourself to the most debased level of Eichmannism, using the unconstitutional and illegal AUMF to try to defend torture and summary extrajudicial murder.
I’ve previously posted 6 different legal reasons why the AUMF is legally void and grossly unconstitutional.
You’ve now rendered yourself wholly inconsequential and anything you say from this point on has the same validity as the claims of a Holocaust denier.
An unconstitutional resolution (not even a law!) cannot be used to legally justify gross violations of the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendments of the constitution, and you know it, and everyone else knows.
I’ve previously cited Supreme Court decisions pointing out that Congress cannot by the mere passage of a resolution invalidate the constitution. This is settled law. Your grotesquely dishonest attempt to dredge up a resolution (not even a law, just a goddamn resolution) in a fatally foolish and failed effort to legally justify the unjustifiable violations of the law Obama has authorized proves your moral and your intellectual bankruptcy.
If you don’t like the constitution, Martin, emigrate to North Korea.
Otherwise, STFU and sit down, you’re embarrassing yourself.
WyldPirate
@Allan:
Fuck off. Greenwald didn’t compare Obama to Hitler in the examples he used. Otherwise, I don’t give two shits about Greenwald.
And you can’t interpret an analogy any better than ABL can. But if you want to sniff her ass, feel free.
Martin
@WyldPirate:
So, arguing that Obama isn’t worse that Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler now makes you an obot?
Ah for the good old days when arguing that bailing out GM was all it took to make you an obot. You guys have really raised your game, I gotta admit.
jeff
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Cool, but here we have John as Diktator, who will, presumably, put an end to the sort of shit that sent me from dKos. The commentariat here also doesn’t matter as much…which is a plus.
arguingwithsignposts
@Dennis G.:
don’t feed the mclarens, pro-tip. or the wyldpirates. I’m surprised Joe Beese hasn’t show up here. it’s his kind of thread.
Dennis SGMM
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Let’s just say that I know what a pinch bar is for.
jeff
@Martin:
Oh good god fuck off to each and every one of us.
Martin
@mclaren:
Well someone is.
I find these rabid defenses of a Constitution recognizable to exactly one person to be curious. Can we all have our own Constitution? That’d be awesome.
LTMidnight
@Martin: The Obama Derangement Syndrome is slowly working its way to Stage 4 with WyldPirate.
LTMidnight
@arguingwithsignposts:
It is a shame. then we can finally see all the Obama Derangement Syndrome inflicted show their hypocrisy.
He’s probably posting at Dkos once again now that it has turned full moonbat.
curious
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: if tokyo rose were a justin bieber fanatic and had a blog, this is exactly what it would look like.
junebug
Will we have John link to some stupid GG post about Afghanistan and how long we have been there or some such after the game is over all in the name of “balance”?
WyldPirate
@LTMidnight:
I had no idea where she lived or what her fucking religion is. I didn’t get any sense of that as I didn’t do anything but go look at the substance of her posts which were mostly one-liner Obama-worship captions to pics of Obama or his family.
Sorry I forgot to read her damned bio. I couldn’t see it for all the clutter of the pictures and videos of Obama which was GG’s point.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
By that logic, his connections to the University of California are even more unseemly since their employees contributed about $500K more than Goldman Sachs.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Dennis SGMM:
Hooooooooookay…
So… now I AM impressed…
Martin
@LTMidnight: I think it’s further curious that we don’t usually see this level of hyperbole until they start feeding into each other.
WyldPirate and mclaren are usually irritating, but all of a sudden here we have this, as soonergrunt so poetically put it ‘total pants-shitting rage’.
Is this always simmering under the surface and they’re just too cowardly to let it out, or has it turned into a one-thread Godwin contest that the rest of us wasn’t invited to and they’ll return to normal tomorrow?
LTMidnight
@WyldPirate:
Which is pretty much all that your Obama Derangement Syndrome would allow you to see.
If you can tolerate the ODS dry heaves of looking at pro-Obama pic long enough, you’d notice that she posts factual news not posted on lefty blogger sites for some strange reason.
Suck It Up!
this is hilarious. He spends the majority of his time in paradise. He probably writes his posts while sitting on the beach with a beer in one hand. give me a break.
John Cole
This whole thread makes me hate blogging. Glenn was over the top and I think wrong, ABL was over the top, and every one of you in here is an idiot.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Ok Flip. You find in what ABL posted where he accuses Obama of being like Hitler and I’ll agree with you. Unless ABL comes on here and edits the original post, you won’t be able to do that.
Just to help you out so you don’t have to click around, here is the analogy Greenwald made:
“If Riefenstahl was an Obama fanatic and had a blog, this is what it would look like (link to Blackwaterdog’s blog);”, so
Riefenstahl is to Hitler as Blackwaterdog is to Obama
You’re a smart guy, so you figure out the rest…
mclaren
@Zipperupus:
There’s a HUGE difference Truman ordering the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what the drunk-driving C student and his torturer sidekick ordered, and what Obama has ordered.
The difference is that the united states congress declared war against Japan on 7 December 1941.
When congress declares war, you are at war.
Congress has not declared war against anyone. Not since 9/11, not at any time.
If you want to argue equivalencies, learn something about the United States constitution. The constitution is very specific about what it takes to declare war.
In article one of the constitution it says:
The constitution does not say: “The president shall have the power to torture and murder innocent people and order the army to murder innocent civilians whenever he likes, just because he feels like it, or just because congress passes some cockamamey resolution which doesn’t even have the force of law.”
The constitution is very specific. You have to declare war to be at war. If you want war powers, the congress must declare war.
The congress has never declared war. Therefore your analog is invalid.
You people really have no idea of what the constitution says, do you?
You people are just pig-ignorant of the basis of American society. You people think the preznit can order people murdered and tortured without charges or a trial “just cuz he’s the preznit” don’t you?
That’s illegal.
That’s a violation of constitution.
The constitution is the fundamental law of the land.
If you don’t like the constitution, AMEND IT. Set up a political movement to amend the constitution to make torture legal and eliminate jury trials and allow the president to order troops to murder innocent civilians in a country with which we’re not at war.
But don’t you dare try to claim any of that unconstitutional shit is legal.
It’s not, and you know it’s not.
By the way, if you socoipathic Obots really have the courage of your convictions, go collectsignatures for a constitutional amendment that eliminates jury trials and allows torture. See how many fucking signatures you get. I’d like that see that.
MARTIN: “Hi, ma’am, we’re collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment that will make Obama’s tortures and extrajudicial murders legal. Would you like to sign?”
WOMAN: “What’s `extrajudicial murder’?”
MARTIN: “That means that Obama can order any American citizen murdered if he feels like it,without a trial and without charges.”
(Woman spits in Martin’s face, kicks him in the crotch, and continues kicking him until he passes out.)
jwb
@WyldPirate: “I couldn’t see it for all the clutter of the pictures and videos of Obama which was GG’s point.” I didn’t take you for stupid. Did you really think this was his point? Sort exponential overkill to invoke Riefenstahl to make that point, don’t you think? Now ask yourself again, what exactly was GG’s reason for making that comparison with Riefenstahl? Why did that particular comparison pop into his head? And why did he think it would be a good idea to tweet it to the world?
tomvox1
@mclaren:
I get it now. You’re obviously irrational and probably mentally ill. It can never be a fair fight with people who are as profoundly disconnected from reality as you are. I certainly won’t engage in it. Get some help and good luck to you.
arguingwithsignposts
@John Cole:
I think this deserves a hearty Go Fuck Yourself, but I’m not sure our ombudsperson would approve.
The Republic of Stupidity
@curious:
True…
And if Blackwaterdog had the full support and backing of the Admin to produce a feature length cinematic paean to Obama… which Bwd doesn’t…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@jeff:
You do include yourself in that “also doesn’t matter as much” group, right?
@John Cole:
You do include yourself in that “everyone in here is an idiot” group, right?
:)
jwb
@The Republic of Stupidity: BWD would also have to have talent.
jwb
@John Cole: It was this or talk about the Steelers.
Elie
I think that we are in the “Top Chef” phase of journalism, bloggerism and political reality…
go look at some of those “reality’ shows and you see the template for this ongoing bullshit
I am reading all this stuff and commenting less and less… – We no longer have capacity for anything but one dimensional representations of anything. Our leaders are either heroes or dupes, sissies and failures. Like cartoons they can only have limited complexity and like story board, our view of what should happen is simple and written in balloons with exclamation marks…
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit driven by folks who need to make a living by getting people to pay attention to anger and resentment.
mclaren
@Martin:
And exactly which part of the eighth amendment is only recognizable to me?
Let me quote the eighth amendment of the constitution:
Now you’re going to tell us that locking prisoners in sensory deprivation tanks until they go insane is not “cruel or unusual punishment.”
You’re a disgrace, Martin.. You’re a lump of excrement that sticks in the craw of America for trying to defend that kind of unbearable torture.
Now you’re going to try to convince us that drowning someone nearly to the point of death, then upending that person and letting them cough and vomit the water out of their lungs,and then drowning them nearly to the point of death…and doing it over and over and OVER again isn’t “cruel and unusual punishment.”
You’re a piece of human garbage, Martin, for your failed and futile efforts to defend Obama’s continuation of Bush’s heinous torture.
You make me ashamed to live in the same country, you piece of scum.
Now here’s Amendment Five of the constitution:
Obama has ordered the murder of Anwar Al-Awlaki without a trial and without even charging him with a crime.
I’ve asked over and over and over again “What crime has Al-Awlaki committed?”
No one can tell me.
People gibber and babble about how he’s allegedly a “bad guy” and he has “said bad things.” So the fuck what?
That’s not a crime.
Show me the crime Al-Awlaki has committed under American law.
No one can do it.
Even if he had committed a crime, the fifth amendment says Obama can’t just order Al-Awlaki murdered without a trial or without even filing charges.
This is not “my version of the constitution,” you ignorant lying Eichmann-wannabe, THIS IS THE CONSITUTITION.
The fifth amendment doesn’t say “everyone must be accused of a crime and arraigned and tried before they can be murdered, except if everyone is really scared.”
The constitution says THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T LEGALLY MURDER SOMEONE UNLESS YOU FILE CHARGES AND ARRAIGN ‘EM AND TRY ‘EM AND ‘CONVICT THEM.
That’s the law of the land.
That’s what the constitution says. It’s there in black and white. It’s not “my opinion.” THAT’S WHAT IT SAYS.
Holy crap, have none of you even read the document on which you entire society and way of life rests???
eemom
@John Cole:
Dude, look on the bright side — I’m the only one who said anything snarky about Jane Hamsher, and nobody cares what I say.
ABL TOTALLY refrained from dissing her on the FP, so you’re TOTALLY safe from her being mean to you again.
And everybody else was too busy fighting about Greenwald and other shit to even notice the 800 pound sacred cow on the blog.
So relax — it’s all good.
hildebrand
I think even the most outrageous Speaker’s Corner cranks would give mclaren a wide berth.
mclaren
@tomvox1:
Shorter version of your post:
Too bad for you. Your distraction tactic didn’t work.
You need to explain to us why stating that the president must obey the constitution of the united states is a sign of mental illness.
I’m waiting.
Anything?
Anything at all other than vacuous name-calling?
…No, didn’t think so.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@eemom:
Moooo!
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: I don’t think Greenwald compared Obama to Hitler, no. I think he compared a kind of sweet Obama fan to a famous Nazi propagandist to make his usual “Dear Leader” point, because he’s a dickbag who thinks that liking a politician is a sign of weak-mindedness.
magurakurin
@John Cole
All of us here? I am honored. And I mean that most sincerely. Yeah, you called me an idiot, but you called me something. I exist :)
cheers, really, seriously, no kidding
cheers and thanks for this blog I enjoy it a lot :)
arguingwithsignposts
i’m really disappointed that Glenn didn’t anoint us with his Dear Leader pissiness in this threat. What has become of Balloon Juice?
mclaren
@hildebrand:
Absolutely. Because it’s “outrageous” and the sign of “crank” to suggest that the president of the united states must obey the constitution.
You people are so sick and so twisted, there aren’t even words in the English language to describe how demented and debased you are.
You describe as “insane” and “outrageous” and “a crank” someone who says that society breaks down without the rule of law, that torture has been banned from civilized societies ever since the 1700s, and that the president of the united states is not above the law and must obey the constitution.
This, to you people, is “insane” and “sick” and the mark of a “crank.”
There truly is no hope for America. You people were born free, but you have made yourselves into serfs by deriding the rule of law and ridiculing the notion that there should be trials and juries instead of just some guy in the White House ordered American citizens murdered and tortured whenever he feels like it.
You people are headed down a very dark and very brutal road, and you are going to get the surprise of a lifetime when the torturers come for you.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: you really are so self-important. i stand by what i said. point to me where i said that GG thinks obama is hitler. did you not see where i said that i agree with him in some respects? by the way, comparison is not equivalence. and retraction? pfffft. i doubt GG is going to be up at night worry about what little ol’ me said.
mclaren, i haven’t read your post yet, but i see you’re still struggling with that scroll button. it’s really not that difficult, buddy.
my writing style is, in some cases, purposefully over the top. it’s not butt hurt, or lack of man-pants, or whatever other silly sexist schoolyard moniker you want to throw at me. i’m going to go eat my dinner and drink some scotch. carry on acting like crazy people, if you must. i’ll wade through it later.
like me or not, i’m sure i’ll survive. gloria gaynor-style.
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren:
You know, that just ignores a ginormous amount of U.S. history that is beneath even your sad ass trollery, mc.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
I’ve never made the claim that Obama is analagous to Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler. That’s hyperbole beyond the pale. I was simply supporting the point that mcclaren was making–and one that Cole himself has made–that people can be highly critical of some of the things Obama has done and still think he is way better than the alternatives.
Do I think he was wrong to escalate in Afghanistan? Damn right and I think it was a purely cynical political decision too and a damned waste. I think it was wrong that he didn’t urge DOJ to investigate Bush and his crew from day one. I don’t know that we are still torturing people in Bagram. I hope we aren’t.
I think mCClaren was right saying that people should get more inflammatory with their rhetoric in calling out the BS of the Right–that was mostly what I was agreeing with mcclaren on. At the same time, though, you have to call BS on your own side, too when they pull BS (like their treatment of the bankers, etc).
But no, I don’t think that Obama=Hitler nor do I think that is wrong to argue against that false equivalency. I didn’t read all of mcclaren’s post and don’t recall him making that comparison. My beef about the Obot thing was about the false accusation made against GG. It stemmed from the fact that he was critical of Obama, not, as was implied, that he made a Obama=Hitler analogy. GG was falsely accused and everyone here piled on. You’re bright enough to read ABLs original post and know she was wrong in accusing him of that. Whether or not you will admit it to yourself is another story. That’s on you, though.
FlipYrWhig
@John Cole: I think your string of sorrowful WTF posts last week upped the ante, and shit-slingers took them as a license to sling more shit than usual, and now the attacks on each other are getting much nastier and more personal. Did you even see the Boschian carnage of the “Broken Beyond Repair” thread?
tomvox1
@John Cole:
Dude, you gotta get out of this hero-worshiping relationship with Greenwald. You are getting played, big time. The guy is a fucking thin-skinned, self-righteous and hypocritical douchebag. And he’s bought & paid for by Koch, Inc. Wake up, amigo. Glenn is a professional demotivator, same as Hazy Jane.
parsimon
Holy crap, this place has completely lost it.
Whether or not Glenn Greenwald was out of line, screaming about it is overkill.
Chris Andersen
Glenn’s first book was a masterful take down of the Bush tendency towards Manicheanism (the belief that everything can be reduced to black-n-white/good-vs-evil).
What I didn’t realize at the time is that Glenn is himself a Manichean. You either agree with his assessment of Obama, or you are as bad as the worse history has to offer.
mclaren
@Elie:
Corner Stone
This place has absolutely lost it. Jesse Cristo.
The Republic of Stupidity
@jwb:
Ooops… for got that one…
Yes… Leni was talented…
What was the title of a doc about her…
‘The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl’?
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Please note who was involved in that carnage.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Just thought I’d fix that for you, sunshine. You really need to get a new schtick.
I was kind of skimming — have you accused Martin of jerking off to Holocaust films yet, or were you still working up to that?
Elie
@WyldPirate:
Back to the same ol same ol
WyldThang, I think that you are a cartoon. Two dimensions are all it takes to represent anything coming out of your head. Do you have the little balloon too?
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Considering that mclaren is claiming that Obama is worse than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined, I have a feeling you didn’t read her rantings very closely.
Not that I blame you. But according to her I’m the psychological twin of Mark David Chapman, so clearly that’s the only reason I think she’s a delusional idiot.
SectarianSofa
@mclaren:
Whatever happened to rocky road ice cream? Do they still make that stuff?
mclaren
@Chris Andersen:
That’s an obvious lie.
Greenwald isn’t asking anyone to agree with his ‘assessment’ of Obama, Greenwald has repeatedly stated the documented fact that Obama has ordered the extrajudicial murder of Americans without charges and without a trial, and that this is grossly unconstitutional and moreover that it exceeds even Bush’s most heinous violations of the consitution by a wide margin.
Go ahead. Explain to us how Obama ordering an American citizen murdered without trial or charges just because Obama doesn’t like what the guy said is even remotely legal or constitutional.
We’re waiting.
According to you, this is just Greenwald’s “assessment.” The rule of law and fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution are, according to you, just “Greenwald’s assessment.”
Great. Show us where the fifth or sixth amendment authorizes the president to order the murder of an American citizen without trial or charges.
Should be simple, since according to you this is just “Greenwald’s assessment” and not the plain language of the constitution of the united states.
I’m waiting.
The Tragically Flip
I really want to take issue with the idea that BWD is some kind of martyr who was driven out of Daily Kos by an angry mob.
Every last one of her diaries hit the rec list and probably all of them hit the top of the rec list. Yes, there were critics and no doubt some of them were rude but no one told her to leave, particularly not Kos or his staff.
And her commentary isn’t all sweetness, she makes a lot of digs at Obama critics. Just look at the “about” of her own blog (emphasis added):
Is she saying left wing critics of Obama are racist? That’s certainly one interpretation, that or they’re just like the “corrupted” media, and certainly they’re not people who “follow the facts, know the truth” etc. This is her technique in a nutshell, she attacks unspecified critics so if anyone objects, one could say “she’s not talking about you” It reminds me of Glenn Reynolds style of cowardly plausible deniability.
I’m not surprised that she herself plays up the martyrdom aspect of leaving the GOS. That’s the theme of most of her posts at GOS anyway, usually it’s Obama being martyred but no reason she wouldn’t reuse the technique on herself.
My experience in her threads is that politely pointing out factual errors or challenging her sweeping generalization dismissals of Obama critics based on some nutpicking brings no reply, and no corrections/updates. I can’t think of another prominent rec lister who almost never wades into the comments on their own posts.
So I’m quite comfortable calling her a dishonest propagandist and no loss to Daily Kos if she left because of her her feelings.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Ah, back to defend torture and murder again. You never get enough of defending torture and murder, do you, Mnemosyne?
How’s your screenplay for Saw XIII coming?
arguingwithsignposts
ABL – clearly, there are not enough updates to this post to justify slamming GG. Up yer game, gal!
FlipYrWhig
@Chris Andersen:
No, it’s not that bad (yet). It’s more like if you disagree with his assessment of Obama, you’re a clueless moron, because Greenwald does everything meticulously according to facts, and thus every subsequent conclusion he draws from those facts, even the slippery and tendentious ones, is unimpeachable. Whatever the issue, he already thought it through, and he has ruled, and the only explanation for how anyone could ever arrive at a different view must be stupidity, corruption, or hypocrisy. If he was grading his own performance, it would always be “A+, nice work!”
Allan
@mclaren:
It’s not our fault you’re not multilingual.
wmd
@Dennis G.:
Another reason is that many feel their hope has been betrayed. A lot of the left believed that they would see many of the things from Obama’s campaign and platform enacted. That hasn’t happened.
It wasn’t rational to expect one man to fix all that was wrong with the US in 2008. Obama made it very clear the image and policies he promoted during the primaries wasn’t how he would govern during the vote of FISA. And sure enough that’s when the hate started.
Personally I stopped working for Obama’s election for about 5 weeks after the FISA vote. Then I got back to work making calls and raising money. Some people never got over it. And the subsequent betrayals (latest being the failures on tax cuts) are adding fuel to the fire.
SectarianSofa
@eemom:
Did you mean the sinus polyp or tunch?
Elie
I’m outa here folks —
goodnight
got something better to do with my time…almost anything from picking my hemorrhoids to flossing is more useful..
Ija
Based on some of the comments here, I think we can safely say that Glenn-bot is as bad or even worse that those accused as being Obot. I mean, wow, you can’t even make a simple criticism of GG before his minions descended and start calling everyone else Obot. GG is just a blogger. Chill out people, he’s not that special. He doesn’t have halo radiating out of his face bringing peace and prosperity to all. He’s being a douchebag in this case, just accept that.
tomvox1
@mclaren:
Here you go, fucktard:
Anwar al-Awlaki
Fort Hood shootings suspect Nidal Malik Hasan was investigated by the FBI after intelligence agencies intercepted at least 18 emails between him and al-Awlaki between December 2008 and June 2009
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 suspected bomber Al-Awlaki and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspected al-Qaeda attempted bomber of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on December 25, 2009, had contacts according to a number of sources.
Faisal Shahzad, convicted of the attempted car bombing of Times Square in May 2010, told interrogators that he was “inspired by” al-Awlaki.
After becoming radicalized by online sermons of al-Awlaki, Roshonara Choudhry stabbed British former Cabinet Minister Stephen Timms in May 2010. On November 4, 2010, she was sentenced at the Old Bailey in London to life imprisonment for attempted murder
In 2010, a female cartoonist at Seattle Weekly had to stop publishing, and at the suggestion of the FBI change her name, move, and go into hiding due to a fatwā calling for her death issued by al-Awlaki.
British Home Secretary, Theresa May, said on November 3, 2010, that an associate of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who was in touch with al-Awlaki, had been arrested in 2010 for allegedly planning a terrorist attack on passenger planes in Britain.
The Guardian and The Telegraph reported that U.S. and British counter-terrorism officials believe that al-Awlaki was behind the cargo plane PETN bombs that were sent from Yemen to Chicago in October 2010.
Crazy, stupid and unable to use the Google is no way to go through life, son.
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
You have to be drunk. I’ve already pointed it out once.
It’s the first sentence, second paragraph below the image of Greenwald’s tweets. Here you go again:
Not only do you not know what you wrote and falsely accused someone, you failed to understand the analogy Greenwald made–which was Blackwaterdog was an Obama propagandist in the vein of Riefenstahl which is what he said in his original tweet.
I wasn’t the one with the reading comprehension problem as you accused me way up the board–it’s you.
Care to make a retraction now or you going to continue to deny what you obviously did?
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I was trying to have a nice normal bitchfest and suddenly it was like I was Ben Roethlisberger’s nose and y’all were Haloti Ngata.
Bob Loblaw
@John Cole:
This. For fuck’s sake, this.
Obscene identity politics and a complete spiral of hate in this thread, and for what?
A deluded, sycophantic woman writes a political fansite that, while ridiculous, doesn’t even rate for devotional insanity on the internet, on any topic or person. Sure, shit like this is just complete nonsense:
“Few hours after returning from Afghanistan, president Obama came out – red eyes and all that – to officially announce the new trade deal with South Korea. You know, that deal he refused to accept a few weeks back because it wasn’t good enough for America, but the media couldn’t care less, they just wanted to celebrate the Obama “failure”.
Now, it turns out that this is one big fucking trade deal – better than the previous NINE trade deals signed by American presidents, COMBINED.”
What does that even mean? How can a trade deal be better than nine other trade deals combined? But it’s completely harmless. Greenwald didn’t need to mock her publicly, and if he really felt the need to, there were so many more entertaining ways to do it that were less politically sensitive. He’s a jerk, he’s always been one, it’s what made him successful at what he does. He hates people in power, but when he turns that focus on the non-powerful instead, he looks like a dickwad. Maybe he’ll learn.
But for the people of this blog to lose their goddamned minds over a random tweet and the insider politics of motherfucking Daily Kos is just…well, if people in your real lives knew that you acted this way online, what would they think of you? Because none of you can possibly be proud of what you’ve accomplished here today.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
See? Repetitive. Dull. You’ve really got to step up your game.
SectarianSofa
@wmd:
‘betrayals’ is a bit strong. If you elect a guy who has been known for compromise, etc., etc.. Anyway, the election was a contest between a smart and apparently ‘reasonable’ guy who we knew would deliver less than the campaign campaigned on, and … well, you know the opposition party and figures. I am definitely disappointed in some pieces, but damn, what’s the alternative? The only thing we should be arguing about is how to get the right things done. Endless bitching is annoying and ultimately self-sabotaging.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Tragically Flip:
Bullshit. The bulk of the bullshit at Kos was from whiners who were offended that anything good about Obama was being posted while ‘insert outrage’ was still going on. Polite? Bwahahahahaha!
Oh come on now! How about Cenk? Oh, right, he’s a manic progressive who can do no wrong.
You are fucking lame. Lame. Lame. Lame.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Elie:
Just don’t get confused and floss your hemorrhoids!
SectarianSofa
@Chris Andersen:
A very black and white take on GG. Still, it’s clear his harmless fun is ruining our harmless fun. We’ve even got Cole pissed. And maybe mad too.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Your lies are getting too foolish to pay attention to, probably you’re spending more time watching torture porn films for ideas for your new snuff-flick screenplays than actually reading this forum. I guess when you get all hot ‘n excited watching some girl get acid poured on her eyeballs, you tend to lose of track of what people are writing here.
I pointed out that the tortures Obama has authorized and continued are as bad as the tortures used by Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin.
That’s what I wrote in response to martina,and it’s factually accurate. The evidence is overwhelming: what was the most feared and heinous torture used by Hitler’s S.S.?
Waterboarding.
Exactly the same torture America used under Bush,and continues to use under Obama.
What was the most savage torture used by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge?
Waterboarding.
Exactly the same torture America used under Bush,and continues to use under Obama.
What was the most brutal torture used by Stalin’s NKVD to break dissenters and force them to make false confessions at show trials?
Waterboarding.
Exactly the same torture America used under Bush,and continues to use under Obama.
So the heinousness and savagery of the tortures America uses are just as bad as those used by Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler, and the documented facts prove it.
The only difference, as I pointed out, is in the number of people tortured and murdered. As I pointed out, Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin are in the lead for sheer numbers.
Now, Mnemosyne, you must explain to us why the campaign slogan “Obama tortured people as badly as Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot but not as many people as they did” is a campaign slogan we should rally around.
I’m waiting, Mnemosyne.
To quote myself, since you obviously didn’t read it:
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
I took it to mean the effects of it would be felt more than other trade deals in job creation or import/exports.
Ija
mclaren,
Were you this insistent about Bush and his many crimes and misdemeanors? Please provide proof and links if possible. Because if you suddenly discover the rule of law because Obama is now President, people might start to wonder at the reasons behind your intense hatred of Obama.
SectarianSofa
@Allan:
Win.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Leni Riefenstahl made all of her films with the full participation and cooperation of the Nazi Party. She was their house propagandist. She had very close ties with Hitler and only managed to escape being imprisoned for her crimes after the war by the skin of her teeth.
Still want to insist that a D-list blogger who gets her pictures from the internet is just like Leni Riefenstahl? Frankly, only someone who is completely ignorant of both film history and WWII history could even begin to make the comparison.
ETA: Someone completely ignorant of both film and WWII history, or someone who wants to have plausible deniability when he calls Obama the same as Hitler. Which do you think Greenwald is?
junebug
@The Tragically Flip:
Seriously playing small ball here.
I don’t know about the rest of the readers/lurkers/sometime commenters, but this small ball GOS is BORING.
GG did what he did and gave a non-apology for it.
I have dealt with non-apologies and I have demanded true apologies and have gotten them — in my workplace.
This nonsense from GG is just that. All of the apologists, are just that.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Oh, look, and it’s bob lobsterclaw too! whee! the party’s just begun! Joe Beese is going to be *so pissed* he missed out on this one.
(note that mclaren conveniently ignored my response to his “born free” comment while he’s trashing everybody else.)
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, the torture and murder of innocent people are just a game to you, Mnemosyne…the classic hallmark of the textbook sociopath.
Keep talking, Mnemosyne. Give us even deeper insights into your sociopathology with your every word.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
I find it so fitting that you actually left your quote of yourself blank. It really illustrates what you do here.
Hob
@mclaren: When people who are familiar with your past history here call you a crank, I don’t think it’s because of your principled position against torture and murder. At least, speaking for myself, that’s not why. I think the violent policy of the U.S. government is pretty vile, and that Obama should have distanced himself much further from his predecessor in that regard. I think the stated policy of targeted assassination is very wrong, although I don’t think it differs greatly from the covert crimes of past decades. I don’t think it’s true that Obama has ordered further torture– the Bagram crimes you mentioned were on Bush’s watch– but it’s certainly possible that there’s something I don’t know. In any case, the administration should have prosecuted the torturers and the ones who directed them.
But you still sound like a crank to me because you write like one. One day you’re hanging out here agreeing with some people and disagreeing with others, and vehemently criticizing the government in terms that more or less make sense; the next day you’re posting pages of apocalyptic shit and calling everyone here really foul names. And at those times, you don’t seem to have any memory of the previous conversations. I mean, I’ve seen you go on a tear about how literally everyone at BJ is a police-state-worshiping fascist who cares nothing about police brutality… just two or three weeks after you participated in a thread where literally every commenter expressed outrage at an incident of police brutality, sometimes in more radical terms than you. It really is like two different people. When you’re on one of these jags, you could be arguing that the sky is blue and people would still think you’re nuts, because everything is turned up to 1100 and you just keep piling on the insults and non sequiturs.
I have no idea if you’re mentally ill, but I’ve had a whole lot of personal and professional experience with people who are, and I have to say, you really come across as someone who has manic episodes from time to time. If so, I wish you the best of luck, because that’s a tough gig.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: Do you really not understand the difference between a comparison and equivalence? Look it up in a dictionary if you have to.
Not drunk yet, but getting there.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Yep, that’s me, your friendly neighborhood sociopath. I torture kittens and kick small children in the shins. You’ve sure got me pegged there.
You’ve already blown your wad with the “jerking off to Holocaust films” bit, so, again, you’re really going to have to come up with something new and different if you want to insult me. Don’t forget, you frequently try to claim that my discussions of my mental illness is a hallmark of pure evil, so you’ve already used that one. Come up with something new for once.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Sly: You beat me to it, damn you.
And has anyone asked mclaren when the revolution is starting? Because I hear a lot of smug moral superiority and very little attempts at actual argument or actual action. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, well nothing more than yet another asshole on the internet.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
It certainly will expand the trade deficit and shutter more American jobs than any Latin American trade deal could hope to achieve. I’m hard pressed to understand why that would be described as “better” in any way for the future of this country, but then again, that’s partisan hypocrisy for ya. I look forward to the administration’s demagoguery on the Evils of Free Trade come 2012…
@arguingwithsignposts:
Wow, I’m just so devastated. How very constructive of you, but I think you can do even better. Quick, call me a racist and really bring it home!
electricgrendel
I have to disagree profoundly with your interpretation of this. You should know from reading Greenwald that if he had wanted to compare Obama to Hitler then he would have just done it. Maybe even in less than the 1000 words most of his articles fill up.
Riefenstahl, aside from being a Nazi, was a propagandist. And if you read BWD’s diaries on Kos then you know she pretty much admits to being a propagandist for Obama as well. There’s no critical thinking, no analysis, nothing but “positive!” news. Anyone who went into those threads and stated the obvious–that Obama, in light of his accomplishments, also appears to have fucked up a whole lot of shit–was attacked for wanting to “bring down Obama!” or “siding with the enemy!”
It is NOT the Nazi affiliation that serves as the basis of the comparison. It is Riefenstahl’s uncritical impulse to glorify that is forming the basis. And honestly- I don’t think the comparison is incorrect at all.
Furthermore- I would like to point out that people who are saying “If as the basis of a comparison you use the personal qualities of someone who happened to be a Nazi then you are necessarily calling the object of that comparison a Nazi” really are baffling me. So basically from 2001 – 2009 whenever someone called a GOP member Goebbels or Eichmann they were calling people Nazis? And yet- no one gave a shit about that. So either you accept that people can be compared to the personal and professional habits of people who are also famous for being Nazis or you admit to a raging streak as a hypocrite for not calling out similar comparisons from 2001 – 2009.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@electricgrendel:
BWD is a freaking blogger and you are fucking nuts.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I just wanted to push ABL into the 400 Club. :)
Congrats ABL!
Mnemosyne
@electricgrendel:
What “uncritical impulse to glorify”? Riefenstahl was high up in the Nazi Party and was paid to be the official propagandist. The Nuremburg rally shown in Triumph of the Will was staged and organized for her so she could get the best shots.
That’s miles away from being a fanblogger.
Again, people who think the comparison between the two is in any way apt is completely ignorant of what Riefenstahl actually did.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@electricgrendel: Yet another mindless Gbot who can’t comprehend that their Fearless Leader could have done something rather abhorrent. Try googling ‘Godwin’s Law’ and then come back to us.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
would it? I haven’t seen a good explanation of it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Way to go OHM! BTW, did you hear that Bob Loblaw was a racist? Who knew?
Nick
@mclaren:
Well I speak five languages, tell me roughly were you going here and I can find the words; pretty sure French, Italian or Greek have the words
Odie Hugh Manatee
@arguingwithsignposts:
Thanks! Really? Well now I do!
:)
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@electricgrendel: Riefenstahl wasn’t some no-namer who collected pictures of Hitler and liked to share her scrapbook of positive Hitler stories from the newspaper. She was the official film propagandist of the Nazi party.
There is no equivalence between Leni Riefenstahl and Blackwaterdog. None.
As I said earlier, BWD’s site resembles an obsessive fansite more than anything else. Now, if you want to go on the record stating that this site also smacks of Leni Riefenstahl, we can at least know that you’re not a hypocrite. Dumber than a sack of hog jowls, sure, but not a hypocrite.
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Greenwald didn’t do that, Mnemosyne. You’re reading into it and taking the analogy where you want to go with it. Most bloggers are “D-list”. But when you look through the website, it is pretty clearly a creepy “hero-worship” quality to the thing which is what the general point of propaganda is.
He said “if :Leni riefenstahl were a blogger…”, Most bloggers ARE D-list bloggers and don’t get millions of hits. And that certainly doesn’t mean that GG accused Obama of being Hitler.
It seems clear from ABLs post title and her misinterpretation of the analogy GG made that she used it as an opening to dig at GG. The “picking on some anonymous blogger” theme seemed a convenient opening (It was a tweet, not a continual attack and he retracted the tweet too and said he went over the top). ABL spiced it up with a false analogy and ya’ll all went for it.
I was making fun of ABL’s over the top post and for her sensitivity and freaking out over a pretty harmless–and accurate– comparison GG made initially which he retracted. I became way more sympathetic to GG when I visited the blog in question.
Angry Black Lady
Thank you, Dennis.
Look: I am not going to temper my outrage at this crap. I acknowledge the good work that Glenn has done. It doesn’t make him above reproach. And his ire at Obama has reached a point of irrationality, in my view. I keep trying to explain it without Explaining It, if you catch my drift.
I don’t think it’s funny so it doesn’t warrant a funny response from me. I’m tired of people speaking for me. I’m tired of people telling me I am speaking too loudly when I speak for myself. You don’t like the “Angry Black Lady” moniker? If I change it to “ABL” I will still be writing with the same voice. You’re not going to like it any better; so stop reading my posts.
Sometimes I’m over-the-top angry (usually to make a point; I’m not sitting in my house in an apoplectic state); sometimes I’m snarky; sometimes I’m scattered; sometimes I’m long-winded. You don’t like it? Don’t read it.
As for the silly slights: I enjoy a healthy back and forth and I have an open mind. If someone can make me see where and how I’m wrong, I will consider that person’s point of view. If you come at me with silliness about fee-fees, I’m not going to take you seriously because it means you’re not taking me seriously. I’ve had enough of people not taking me seriously; I’ve stopped acknowledging those people. I’m certainly not going to acknowledge such people who live exclusively in my computer. If you don’t take me seriously, stop reading my posts. It really is that easy.
If I’m wrong, I will back down. If I wrong someone, I will apologize. I don’t think I’m wrong here; so, I’m not backing down.
For those of you who can’t make a point without some silly attempted insult, you are wasting your time. Stop reading my posts. If the only thing you can think of is to say I’m a bad writer (ha!) or some other silly nonsense, then I hope you’re having fun, because I’m not reading it. Not because it hurts my feelings, but because I’m busy and I don’t have time for it. I like to learn from people, not sit around all day trading barbs. There’s too much scotch in the world and I don’t even know you. Get a grip.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: for the last time: I’m not sensitive. My lord, you’re dense.
ETA: someone posted this a while back and I’ve bookmarked it for occasions such as these:
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#enjoyit
numbers 3, 5-10 are apropos.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
The Economic Policy Institute had an advance estimate of a net increase of the trade deficit around $17B compared to current policy.
Whether you trust the EPI or not, I think it’s generally been a pretty reliable left-leaning economic think tank. It’s important to note that the administration’s own work on the deal (i.e. the cheeriest take you could ask for, in all likelihood) shows that at best the agreement is net-neutral on American job creation. Which means that it’s a goddamned certainty this is going to cost the American worker.
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/free_trade_agreement_with_korea_will_cost_u.s._jobs/
Thank you for engaging in a decent fashion, Nick. I’ve never had a problem with you for that exact reason, even if we disagree on what is doable within this corrupt system of ours more often than not.
mclaren
As everyone now realizes, Martin is a compulsive pathological liar and he’s proven this with numerous statements. Let’s start with his first lie, in #231:
As everyone can tell, this is clearly obvious lie, since Obama made multiple promises which he has renegged on.
1) Obama promised to end the rigged kangaroo-court military commission “trials” that were so dishonest that the chief military prosecutor at Gitmo resigned in protest. Obama of course betrayed his promise, and now we get military trials instead of the civilian trials which Obama specifically criticized Bush for.
2) Obama promised that the rule of law would return with him and he bitterly criticized the Bush maladministration for its numerous unconstitutional violations of the law — then Obama turned around and committed even more heinous unconstitutional violations of the law by ordering the extrajudicial murder of a U.S. citizen without charges and without a trial.
3) Obama bitterly criticized Bush’s coddling of the wealth lawbreakers and financial criminals…then Obama turned around refused to put a single one of the financial criminals who destroyed the world economy in jail. Obama could’ve unleashed his DOJ on ’em. He refused. Instead, Obama deliberately and wilfully let the Wall Street criminals walk scot free.
4) Obama attacked mandates during the campaign and said they weren’t the answer…then he turned around and came out in favor of mandates, while putting in place no cost controls. Thus insuring that our current broken medical-industrial complex will get worse, until it implodes, because ordinary people can no longer afford the health insurance premiums the government now forces them to pay.
5) Obama criticized the Iraq war, yet at his order the U.S. now has more military presonnel in Iraq than at the height of our “surge.” Obama has merely done a dishonest game with troop numbers by removing army troops and substituting many many more mercenaries. So Obama has gone back on his word on Iraq, and we have more military personnel there now than when Bush was running things.
6) Obama criticized the war on drugs, but he’s stepped it up, with Attny Gen Holder calling for even more stringent penalties against possessing marijuana “in order to defeat the Mexican drug cartels.” Obama claimed he had stopped DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, and he lied — he has merely carried them out with less publicity than Bush.
In every way, at every level, Obama has lied. Obama has betrayed just about every one of his promises. Except for one: Obama pledged to continue the failed and futile war in Afghanistan, which America has already lost — and that he has done.
In short, if the policy was evil, insane and pointless, Obama continued it, and extended it.
That’s a great deal of things Obama has done that many people have criticized him. But, of course, as a brainwashed Obot, Martin doesn’t realize this — he thinks Americans love Obama’s continuation of Bush’s torture and lost pointless wars and erosion of civil rights.
Moving on to Martin’s next lie — in #238, he lies:
That’s an obvious and demented lie, so we need not take much time to debunk it. As Martin well knows, I pointed out what Brad DeLong pointed out — to quote Brad DeLong:
Source: Social Sudies 50th Anniversary Symposium: Is there hope for the rule of law in America?
Giggle giggle, snicker snicker, goes Martin — hehehehe, how crazy these people are. Yes, all those law professors citing Anglo Saxon law prohibiting torture and extrajudicial murder going back to William the Conquerer, they’re all craaaaaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
That’s the caliber of ‘argument’ we get from Martin. Not just lies, but grotesquely obvious and foolish lies that would embarrass even a three-year-old child… Ridicule of an entire panel of law professors citing a thousand years of precedents to show why Obama’s tortures and extrajudicial murders are grossly unconstitutional, but much more: repugnant to the very basis of the rule of law in Western society for a thousand years.
And Martin giggles at this, and finds it funny.
Moving on to Martin’s next lie, we come to his flagrantly obvious lie that Obama doesn’t torture anyone.
Martin cites Obama’s executive order “ensuring lawful interrogations.” Then Martin lies:
Of course I have evidence. The evidence has been splashed over the media for nearly a year and a half.
Let’s look at the overwhelming evidence that Obama continues the tortures of John Yoo’s Bush administration torture chambers, a depravity as despicable as the worst depths of the Grand Inquisition (who used the very same torture, waterboarding):
May 11, 2010: ICRC Confirms Existence of Second Secret Prison at Bagram, BBC Reports Torture.
Detainee abuse continues at Bagram
Afghanistan’s Bagram prison may be worse than Guantanamo. Why does President Obama tolerate it?
And now we run into the 3-link limit, which Martin has cleverly used to try to claim “mclaren has no links!” Martin is of course lying, since I have a bunch more links but can’t include them here lest this post get slammed into moderation.
So instead google “Torture and the `Black’ Prison, or what Obama is going as Bagram (Part One).” Yet more evidence that Obama continues the tortures of the Bush regime.
Or google “Bagram Prison is located within the Bagram Air Base, approximately 30 miles north of Kabul, Afghanistan. The U.S government claims that Bagram Prison is used as a detention center for “terror suspects.” However, a growing amount of information suggests the abuse of power by U.S military officials. At least seven U.S soldiers were exposed to have been torturing and brutally killing unarmed Afghan and Pakistani civilians, including at least one minor. According to the human rights lawyers of various inmates, some of the interrogators who participated in the abuse remain uncharged. Below are some documents revealing the situation of U.S torture and abuse of power at Bagram prison.”
The evidence that Obama has continued to torture prisoners is overwhelming.
Moreover, I’ve posted this evidence over and over and over and OVER again.
Yet the obots continue to scream their lies, denying that Obama tortures. It’s demented. The more I post the evidence, the more they shriek their obvious and proven lies “Obama doesn’t torture!”
It’s sick, as sick and demented as the outright denial by the Bush officials “We don’t torture” even though it was plainly evident that they were waterboarding prisoners — in some cases, hundreds of times (Sheik Khalid Mohamed was waterboarded a ming-boggling 168 times).
So what’s the upshot?
The bottom line is that Martin is a liar. Martin has lied and lied and lied and lied and lied.
Martin has lied about just about everything. Martin lies when he makes claims about criticisms of Obama, Martin lies about what I’ve said about Obama, Martin lies about Obama not torturing prisoners, Martin lies when he claims Obama hasn’t ordered the extrajudicial murder of Anwar Al-Awlaki, Martin lies and lies and lies and lies.
Essentially everything out of Martin’s mouth is a lie. And I’ve proven it, in detail.
If Martin were unable to tell lies to defend Obama, he would have to fall mute. We would hear nothing at all from Martin. Because the only thing Martin can utter in his failed an futtile efforts to defend Obama from the consequences of Obama’s own high crimes and misdemeanors are lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, and yet more lies.
arguingwithsignposts
@mclaren:
Martin has posted far more intelligent responses on most threads than you, mc. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. You, not so much.
lol
@Angry Black Lady:
Keep the Angry Black Lady moniker. The unrequited racism of the ultra-white Professional Left is a story that needs to be told.
Zuzu's Petals
If that were true, GG could have named any number of current or recent flacks who have uncritically glorified politicians. What distinguishes Riefenstahl is her willingness to glorify a totalitarian despot.
You are sliding past the obvious in your attempt to defend GG.
Angry Black Lady
you people made me miss my QRANK game. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.
heh.
Ija
I guess this thread proves that those people who claim that ED is the only FP getting shit from commenters are wrong. Other FP have commenters who torment them, too! ED, you are not so special after all.
wmd
@SectarianSofa:
I’m with you. I don’t feel betrayed. I do feel that Obama hasn’t fought as hard for principles I hoped he would fight for, with the
Bush Tax cutsBush Deficit increases the latest.What I was saying is that the hate can be explained by some people feeling their hopes in Obama were betrayed by Obama as he is. Minimal to do with race – Dennis was implying race had a lot to do with it and I think that there is some greater hope in Obama because of his parentage, but it’s a far cry from what Dennis usually writes concerning race based politics.
I’m likely to work for Obama’s re-election. Very unlikely to support a primary challenge. Depending on what state I’m in I may vote for him again (if it would make a difference in electoral vote calculus , if it’s certain my state’s electoral votes are going to Obama anyway a protest vote may make sense to me).
priscianus jr
@Anya:
Michael Finn
@mclaren:
First of all, I’m not the one making moral equivalence here; you are.
I’m just pointing out that your representation of your ideas are insane. I get what you are trying to say, that Obama’s systemic abuse of the Detainees is in violation of the Geneva convention which has been signed by the United States of America, making it the supreme law of the land, which can make him a criminal. But frankly, I find you so morally repugnant that your argument is a lost cause.
The millions of people that died from those horrific acts are not nothing. Do not devalue the entire civilizations of the Incas, Mayans, and the Aztecs who suffered from the plagues, the waste done to their society.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Zuzu’s Petals: Again, I have to point out that what distinguishes Riefenstahl (besides her immense talent for film making) is that she worked directly for the Nazis. Her films were commissioned and funded by the Nazis, for the express purpose of influencing the world’s opinion of the Nazi regime.
The only way any blogger could possibly be equivalent is if she were directly funded by Obama or the Democratic party. (Or, I suppose, if her blogging was so brilliant that she changed the techniques used by bloggers, and was so influential that her blog could conceivably be studied by blog-school students for generations to come. BWD’s Tiger Beat: Obama Edition shtick doesn’t meet that criteria either.)
Suck It Up!
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
No it does not. There is nothing obsessive about it. Its news, actual news that’s overlooked and/or never discussed.
eemom
@lol:
indeed. For obvious reasons, it gets no attention in the progressive circlejerkosphere itself, but I am pleased to see it increasingly brought into the open by ABL and many of the black commenters here.
I would bet serious money that the modern-day commentariat of FDL, HuffPo and others of their ilk are as white as a Teatard rally.
Peter
@mclaren: Personally, I prefer a good alfredo sauce. Depends on what pasta you’re using, though.
Not sure what this has to do with the post, though.
Suck It Up!
@mclaren:
Get a fucking blog for all this shit.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Gawd-DAMMIT I loves me some balloonbagger poutrage circlejerk. That’s your constant accusation toward others, isn’t it? “Poutrage”? Oh, the foo has shit – so wear it.
1st Rule of Balloonbaggers: Any criticism of President Obama or his followers is conclusive proof of RACISM!!!
Hey, you know who else objected to criticism of Precious Leader’s idolaters…
.
.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate:
Greenwald doesn’t believe in political hero-worship. So far so fine. He appears to think all fervid defense of the merits of flawed politicians is a slippery slope to hero-worship, which is itself a slippery slope to totalitarianism (which is what “Dear Leader” as a phrase points to). That’s crackers. But he does it all. the. time. He lodges a criticism, someone takes exception to it, and eventually he’ll drop a Dear Leader bomb, because to take an opposing view to Greenwald is a sign that you must have been brainwashed into a mindless drone.
And then, just to cap off the irony, for his efforts Greenwald gets wrapped in a mantle of glory and extravagantly praised for his courage and commitment to justice… and defended strenuously, even when he makes mistakes, because either he didn’t really make a mistake this time, or he has done so many other good things that this one stumble can’t invalidate. Which sounds a lot like… hero worship.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@FlipYrWhig: “Which sounds a lot like… hero worship.”
OMG! Do you know who else was worshiped as a hero? Eh? Eh?!
That’s right.
Ripley
Whew, long thread – glad we got everything settled though.
We did get everything settled, right?
Allan
@eemom: It’s rather a recurrent topic of conversation at the Great Orange Satan how much older, whiter, and better off their site demographics are when compared to the actual Democratic Party. Some of them even worry about whether their site is a welcoming place for African-Americans for a moment before resuming calling the first AA president a pussy loser sellout Republican who should be primaried by Progressive Icon Russ Feingold.*
* Whose actual voting record was rated by National Journal as being more conservative than Joe Lieberman’s, and was likewise unreliable when it came to sticking with the Democratic caucus on procedural votes.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Actually, no. Propaganda is a political tool used by politicians to win people over to a particular point of view. A single person cannot create propaganda. Unless you’re claiming that BWD is being paid by the Obama administration to post stories that make him look good, what she’s doing is not propaganda. It’s fan worship.
When Armstrong Williams secretly took money from the Bush administration to write articles in support of their policies, that was propaganda. Since GG thinks that BWD’s site is close enough to Riefenstahl’s work as to equate the two, what did he think of Armstrong?
ETA: And does he think that BWD’s fan site is morally equivalent to Armstrong’s actions? Funny how actual malfeasance by Bush is now exactly the same thing as a private citizen setting up an Obama fan site.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Suck It Up!: Collecting and displaying pictures of anybody that you don’t know personally is kind of obsessive. That said, I have no problem with obsessive fansites, and frankly I’m glad that Obama has a few.
As for the news content, nothing there impressed me. Her post on jobs, for example, was a lot of hot air and unsupported conclusions. Her post on the trade agreement was a bunch of bluster. Bigger than the last nine trade agreements? Oooooookay. There was nothing terribly objectionable, sure, but nothing to convince me to add her blog to my rotation either. It’s a minor site devoted to Obama worship, no more or less.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Remember how Greenwald was all up in arms at The Nation article on that guy who said “don’t touch my junk,” because he thought _they_ were too harsh on a guy who had done something that made Obama look bad, even though The Nation is basically a cerebral version of the DKos rec list? Greenwald sniffs propaganda and psy-ops around every corner.
Zuzu's Petals
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I understand your point. The point I was trying to make is that she is distinguished not just for working for the nazis, but for her willingness to overlook the moral implications in doing so. And that involved the glorification of a totalitarian despot.
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
You can just put that fucking red herring away right now, ABL, “cause I ain’t playing no more.
I know what a fucking analogy is and you misinterpreted one. On top of that, you accused Greenwald of something he didn’t do which was, in your exact words, “..you did to compare Obama to Hitler”. I seem to remember a certain Sen. Durbin who had to stand at the front of the US Senate and apologize for some remark he made that was similar to the false accusation you made towards Greenwald.
Now maybe you ought to look the word analogy the fuck up and put it in your pipe and smoke that for a bit. Or you can puff on that red herring you’ve got in plentiful supply.
You can either fess up to what you did, or you’re pulling a an E.D. Kain. That’s not too attractive of a thing for a lawyer to do–at least an honest one with any integrity.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
The reason I like checking out BWD’s material is that I can see lots of pics of the President in interesting situations at one place. I like looking at the facial responses of a variety of everyday people who the President meets in his work. What really warms my heart is seeing the looks in the faces of AA’s who meet Obama. It is clear that they are gobsmacked that ‘one of them’ has really become the President of this country and it is clear that they are rightfully proud of it. Damn, I’m proud of it and I’m white so I can only imagine how they feel.
So I can only imagine how they feel when they see our President shit on in an endless parade by his party, his so-called supporters, the M$M and the right. I’m betting it isn’t making them very happy. Now one AA woman wants to have a place to post positive info about the President, tossing in pictures taken from the media, and that makes her a Nazi-style propagandist?
That’s just sick.
While the pictures are all over the web for me to find, it’s kind of nice to see them in one place. I really don’t pay much attention to what is said there but I don’t go there for the text or a narrative. While I both disagree and agree with Obama, I do like the guy and it gets pretty tiring hearing and reading all of the shit that is said about him day in and out. BWD has a place where you can see the president without having to read negative shit about him. Good for her. Those of you who are looking for ‘balance’ are the same ones who complain about M$M equivalence between the left and the right always ‘doing the same thing’.
Their ‘balance’ crap in regards to Obama is the same damned thing. Bullshit.
Mnemosyne
If anyone is still confused, the modern-day Leni Riefenstahl is this guy, not BWD.
Is that sufficiently clear?
FlipYrWhig
@Odie Hugh Manatee: One thing: is “blackwaterdog” black? That wasn’t the impression I had, but I don’t know either way.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@FlipYrWhig:
From reading her early material, to the best of my knowledge she is elderly, black and Jewish (but I could be wrong). Thus the Nazi bit by GG was particularly reprehensible.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: are you still talking?
you want me to smoke words and fish now?
Yutsano
@Angry Black Lady: This keeps up you’re gonna hit 500 by midnight Pacific time. I think the BJ record for a comment listing is 766. You done did good here!
Bob Loblaw
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh apparently she’s whatever racial or ethnic identity people need her to be. Black, Jewish, Cherokee, it’s all good…
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Mnemosyne, I know how you like to play word game shit like this and quote people out of context, but that’s one of many definitions of propaganda. There is not just one single definition.
Here’s one:
information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
Now I’ve seen “triumph of the Will” many years ago. It’s pretty fucking creepy IIRC. I got the same sense looking over the web site for about ten minutes. How Obama was “wonderful this” and a “true leader” that. Picture after picture with flattering captions. Interspersed between were short diatribes against those that criticized Obama and articles praising good things that he did.
Now do I think it was the equivalent of Triumph of the Will? No. Do I think it is relatively harmless? Yes. Do I think it was creepy and propaganda-like with the obsession of a fanatic driving it? Damn skippy I did and I can see where Greenwald did, too. Do I think in the end it is relatively harmless? Yeah I do.
But I can also see where the idea of the comparison to Riefenwahl could pop into Greenwald’s head, especially if he had recently seen something about Hitler on the History channel or he was doing some research on something.
And no, I don’t think what that person did is the equivalent of Armstrong William’s acts. That was journalistic malpractice and propaganda that reached a lot of people.
Donald G
Green Balloon Juice, people! Reading the comments threads for the past few weeks, I think we need a new tag if John and/or DougJ haven’t used it, yet: “We are all firebaggers, now.”
Greenwald was being a douche and being a douche is nothing new for Greenwald. ABL called him on it, and was right to do so. Focusing on the Left’s reverence for or lack of reverence for Obama is merely a distraction.
The Real Enemy is out there … the Republican Party… and we’re pointing our guns in the wrong direction and proving correct every damned Republican assessment of liberal Democratic weakness over the past thirty years.
Let’s pull it together, guys.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
I think it popped into his head because he vaguely knows that Riefenstahl had something to do with Nazi propaganda so he thought it would be a funny, snarky thing to do to compare BWD’s website to Riefenstahl. No one who actually knows who Riefenstahl was and what she did would make the comparison, because it’s like using an elephant gun to shoot a mosquito. It’s like claiming that having to use a single garbage collection company is like living in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Now Greenwald looks like a massive asshole for attacking a minor blogger for her fansite and making a ridiculously hyperbolic comparison that leaves him open to people assuming he’s making an Obama = Hitler comparison. And you know what? He only has himself to blame. If he had made a Justin Bieber or Twilight joke, none of this would have happened, and it would have the benefit of actually being accurate. But he was overcome by his ODS once again and shot himself in the foot.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh bullshit, flip. I think Greenwald is a talented writer and researcher that really knows his shiot and is exceedingly careful at documenting his arguments , but he is an overbearing gasbag as well. I rarely ever read him anymore and at the most, I might have visited his site once a week.
What I am pissed over is that ABL is trying to weasel out of responsibility for accusing him of something he didn’t fucking do. That’s E.D. Kain level BS i and it has nothing to do with the fact that Greenwald is a big gasbag.
You of all people should understand that after yesterday. I unintentionally made the same sort of mistake. I was called on it, I went back to check and I found out I made an honest mistake. I owned up to it and apologized immediately.
All I’m asking for out of ABL is a little fucking integrity. Not tossing out a trail of stinking red herrings to grease her weasel path.
taylormattd
@WyldPirate: Fuck off you stupid fucking PUMA.
the farmer
That has to be one of the funniest things I’ve read here all night (“especially if he had recently seen something about Hitler on the History channel”) – especially when you take into account that Greenwald is the former attorney (and frequent past apologist) for white supremacist neo-nazi Matt Hale. Yeah, I bet Glenn saw something about Hitler on the History channel… or something.
Irony is dead.
*
Mrs. Polly
@WyldPirate:
You are clinging to the word “analogy” like a man overboard to a piece of rotten plank, WP, but it’s sinking you. The other figures of speech are circling you like hungry sharks about to bite you in the vitals.
BWD’s blog is like what Leni Reifenstahl’s would have been like? Why? Uncritical? There are plenty of uncritical fanblogs devoted to Palin, Reagan, Hillary–there’s a pleasant one just devoted to Hill’s stint as SOS. Is the author like Leni Reifenstahl?Are all these people little Leni Reifenstahls? Either GG would have to say no, or else expand Reifenstahl into meaninglessness.
So Obama has power, as the President, and Greenwald strongly objects to how Obama uses it. And this woman has posted a blog of pictures that points out positives she believes are neglected. GG strongly condemns her for not falling in step with his assessment, which to him is uncritical worship. As he is a big national columnist and she is a number of steps below him, casually slamming her is kind of prickish (always slap UP!) but quite in line with Twitter, your non-reflective Instapunitry for the new age.
But Leni Reifenstahl? GG’s contention that BWD’s support for Obama, pictures of the troops evidently feeling some love for him, etc, is Reifenstahlian-level propaganda can only mean that he thinks she is overlooking a Hitlerian amount of evil. That is what he tweeted, however he tries to walk it back. “Anyone with a minimal amount of understanding can see that I didn’t” translates in this case to yes, you can think that he didn’t—if you have a minimal amount of understanding. Or else don’t want to understand.
I don’t think he believes what he tweeted, either. It was a lazy, pissy, shrill bit of non-thinking from an unbending moralist with plenty of skeletal bones rattling around in his walk-in, O Jewel of the Koch Bros’ institute. And being pinched somewhat in the graciousness department, he can’t offer a genuine apology to the much smaller person he smacked around like a high-school bully. Furthermore, Godwin, Schmodwin, the man’s rule has escaped his grasp, so Glenn’s hauling him out like McCluhan in a Woody Allen movie isn’t going to work.
Finally, Leni Reifenstahl was not a big believer in Nazism; she was, however, fond of her own skin, which makes her complicated story even worse in many ways. She always maintained that she didn’t know, etc etc etc. What she did do was so vastly different from BWD’s poor little blog that comparing the two is ludicrous.
As for ABL’s sensitivity, she goes full-on, pretty much all the time. The moniker is not Apathetic Black Lady.
If she were ever to freak out, your screen would now be all over your face, instead of egg.
taylormattd
@WyldPirate: Anybody who alleges there is a single thing wrong with this post by ABL is a fucking moron. Get the fuck over yourself. You’re enraged only because you creamed your pants when you saw St. Greenwald had compared a supporter of the person you hate most in the world, Barack Obama, to a Nazi propagandist.
John, when will you ban these PUMA psychopaths?
Mnemosyne
@Mrs. Polly:
Eh. She said after the war that she wasn’t a big believer, and they were never actually able to pin anything on her, but all of the objective evidence (as in, other than her statements) indicates that she was a true believer. Sadly, artistic talent and good moral judgement do not always go together.
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Well, what you came up with is certainly a hypothesis behind his motivations, but I don’t know that you can determine if it is THE reason or he had any malicious, willful intent.
Of course he only has himself to blame, but in the overall scheme of things, this is nothing. On top of that, he owned up to the fact that he went over the top in his comparison and he retracted it in a later tweet. Hell, for all we know, he may have sat down and emailed this blogger an apology.
What I’m not particularly sympathetic to is that he should be ashamed because he was “picking on some poor sweet, D-list blogger”. It’s a big internet and there are all sorts of sites that dog other sites and poke fun at things and people. What Greenwald did was make an off-hand comment on his twitter account and not a 3,000 word diatribe on his frigging blog. That we are here yapping about it at 2:40 am EST doesn’t make the issue one of national fucking importance. It just means we are a bunch of dweebs with nothing better to do.
chaseyourtail
@WyldPirate: I don’t find BWD’s blog to be “creepy” at all. She’s upfront that her blog is in response to what she sees as a barrage of unfair attacks on the president. She happens to really like Barack Obama and believes in him as a leader. What the hell is wrong with that? It’s not like she’s shoving her point of view down anyone’s throat. She’s never done that, ever. She’s expressing her personal feelings on her personal blog and that punk Greenwald has to try and slime her. Now that’s creepy.
Allan
WyldPirate has said that BWD’s blog is creepy about seventy-three times so far in this thread. I’m looking forward to the seventy-fourth version of this same comment soon. BWD’s blog has apparently seared itself onto his retinas such that he will never ever be able to see anything but the creepiness, or talk about anything else, ever again.
It gives you the creeps, you say? Tell us more. We haven’t explored the creepiness in sufficient detail yet. Another 500 or so comments are needed.
Reminds me of Christine O’Donnell: I never said Mike Castle is gay! Why does everyone keep saying I said Mike Castle is gay? I would never say that Mike Castle is gay. I have know way of knowing if Mike Castle is gay. What difference would it make if Mike Castle is gay?
Mrs. Polly
@Mnemosyne: OK, I’m willing to be educated on that. I haven’t read the Wonderful Terrible Life, so I don’t know.
My father was in the photo world, and knew her, by the way, but that doesn’t give me any special knowledge on her at all–the one time we talked about her, he told me that she always maintained that she didn’t know about the camps, any of it. And he didn’t believe her, but that old lady would just fix her eyes on you and silently challenge you to challenge her. I don’t know how many did, but he did not. “She was an old lady, what was I going to do?” he said.
If you want creepy, there’s creepy.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Malicious, willful intent would mean that he genuinely thinks that this woman’s fansite is as dangerous as Triumph of the Will and knew exactly the comparison he was making. I don’t think that even Greenwald is that far gone, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was a stupid, poorly thought out comparison.
It’s funny, because if anyone says anything resembling this about Obama, you start screaming about how they’re mindless Obots who can’t stand to hear anything negative about their hero. Pot, meet kettle.
I think it’s problematic that a media figure who has a major blog and who appears on TV as a political expert would decide to come down hard on a minor blogger who runs a fansite. If Greenwald doesn’t realize that he has power, I’m sure that BWD will be able to send him a sampling of the e-mail she’s received since his idiotic tweet to enlighten him.
If you don’t understand why it’s bad for the powerful to make fun of the powerless in a public forum, I can’t help you.
ETA: Saying that he “rescinds” the comparison is not an apology. An apology includes the words “I’m sorry” or “I regret” somewhere in it. What he’s sorry about is that people called him out for being an asshole, not for saying what he did.
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
You can’t own up to what you did, huh?
C’mon now. Tell us yes or no. Did you falsely accuse Greenwald of comparing Obama and Hitler? Yes or no? did you misinterpret his analogy? Answer the question–yes or no, counselor.
Last chance…going, going. gone.
Ok. that’s settled. I gave you numerous chances.
You have no fucking personal integrity AND you’re a weasel. I should have expected as much out of a frigging lawyer.
You’re E.D. Kain material except you should have the training to know better than to do what you did and the persona integrity to own up to your mistake when called on it (and I do think that that is what it is, BTW). The only thing now is to see if you are treated like he is. Somehow I doubt it.
chaseyourtail
@Allan:
LMAO.
eemom
@Mrs. Polly:
spleeeeendiforous smackdown! I especially like ze opening:
and closing:
.
well done, most well done.
I’m personally of the scroll-by-don’t-read persuasion when it comes to WP and mccrackerjack, but I recognize that’s just laziness on my part.
Mnemosyne
@Allan:
I can’t imagine why anyone would think that Greenwald is slyly comparing Obama to Hitler just because he compares an Obama fansite to a Nazi propagandist. I mean, he’s just saying, amirite? Why are you people so sensitive?
Allan
@WyldPirate: We look forward to the sentencing phase of ABL’s trial. Will you be calling for the death penalty?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I hear you. And having pictures gathered for the people who want to see them is what fansites are for. There’s discussion to be had for fervent Obama supporters as well, and that’s great. It’s nothing that interests me in the slightest, which makes it no more objectionable than 99% of the internet.
Comparing BWD to the Nazi’s most effective propagandist is despicable on many levels, not the least of which is to further trivialize the meaning of propaganda. Greenwald, of all people, should know this. In a media environment that is utterly saturated with various forms of propaganda, to pretend that a blog run by a private individual without outside funding and almost no original content fits the bill is ridiculous. There’s more honest-to-dog propaganda in any issue of the NYT than there is on BWD’s blog.
That Greenwald believes otherwise greatly lowers my opinion of him and his critical thinking skills. That’s what this story is really about to me. It’s sad to see somebody I once held in very high esteem become such a sad farce.
Mrs. Polly
@eemom: Thanks, eemom! I can see why you’d scroll by someone with a convex learning curve.
Whiffed Pywrecks, trying to use your L&O chops on Angry Black Lady is pretty funny–COUNSELOR!
Since she correctly pointed out that Greenwald compared Obama to Hitler, the counselor is excused.
Bailiff, remand the prisoner.
Mnemosyne
Okay, I need sleep, but I have to say that I’m looking forward to Greenwald’s 3,000 word screed tomorrow about how the fact that he was called out for being an asshole proves that he’s right about the evil Obots and their mindless worship of Dear Leader. He’s not going to be able to let this amount of criticism go by unaddressed.
SectarianSofa
@wmd:
Yeah, I don’t see race playing it to it much, but maybe that’s subjective and I don’t know the whole story. Or I do. Hard to tell.
Either way, the GOP is so over-the-top shitty right now — anti-science, anti-intellectual, racist, anti-immigrant, relgiously and culturally intolerant, proudly ignorant, anti-poor, anti-gay — that it isn’t a very high bar for any Democrat (or what, Miracle Independent?) to get my support. And Obama is way above adequacy — relatively speaking, if we’re talking deeds, and absolutely if we’re talking his ability. Shit, if someone wants to be giddy with Obama, I’m fine with that. As others have said here, the rest of the world seems to be doing fine carping and caviling, undercutting and criticizing. No harm with some cheerleading as far as I’m concerned. It’s overdone, I’m sure, but what isn’t?
Allan
@Mnemosyne: Interesting that Greenwald and Sarah Palin share this trait of feeling compelled to respond to practically everything written or said about them. They both seem to derive a great deal of energy from having, making and nurturing a grudge against an enemy. And even better, it’s the same enemy!
Ija
I’m pretty disappointed with Obama for so many things. But weirdly enough, the more I see things like ‘Dear Leader’, ‘Obot’, “Obama is a war criminal’, ‘Obama is the worse leader in 1000000000000000000000 years of history’ etc etc, the more I seem to rethink my disappointment. There’s something about the intensity of the hatred for him, especially from the left, that’s actually tempering my own feelings of disappointment or dislike of him. It’s strange.
David Richey
Gonna hazard a recap, see how close I get. Happy to be wrong, happy for feedback, but here’s how I read the tea leaves.
Glenn Greenwald, a prominent civil-rights commentator, prolix as billy-hell, granted, but influential and w/his heart in the right place usually, lets fly w/a sneering, bullying, hyperbolic tweet about an obscure (basically harmless) Obama web-site. Glenn harshes onna Obama fan-girl, basically. Then, chastened for being a dick, Greenwald thinks better on his classlessness and retracts the breach of Godwin’s Law by toning down the (still classless) insult to its proper (if yer gonna be a dick, at least be accurate) pitch. (Stay classy, Glenn!)
Bad form. Granted. Not at issue.
Angry Black Lady, however, spurred to frothing, spittle-flecked indignation and (justifiably) hating on Greenwald’s flip bullying, takes up her righteous sword and … overreacts. Wildly. Beyond all proportion to the injustice.
Worse form. imo.
Greenwald was a hyperbolic dick in an off-hand remark and ABL descended to his level, magnifying Greenwald’s embarrassing molehill into ABL’s acutely embarrassing explosion of mountainous vitriol.
The ridiculous imbroglio reminds me of that cringe-inducing (b/c we’ve all prolly done it before) cartoon depicting some guy clacking away furiously on his computer, too ardently focused on his zealous mission of truth to join his beckoning beloved in bed on account of: “Something. Incredibly. Important!” What? What?
“Somebody is wrong on the internet!”
I’m not young enough to know everything anymore, but I will readily concede that, imo, Greenwald blew it on this one.
And sure, on balance, Glenn Greenwald can be a hyperventilating know-it-all, but, also on balance, Greenwald is usually worked up to fever pitch about something that actually matters. (Just not in this case.) And, to his credit, Greenwald usually knows his beans. He’s a valuable voice when he’s not dissing on Obama fan-girls. So I might phrase it, “Yes, Greenwald can be a dick, but he’s our dick.”
Given the ineffectual lickspittles who are oft-branded “liberals” and who inhabit most of our lame commentariat, that counts for much w/me.
Which is why a suitably proportional response, conspicuously absent amid ABL’s fulminations, would entail calling out Greenwald for being a graceless dick and letting it go at that. Greenwald might be a prickly pear, but he’s proven his dedication and worth to liberal endeavors, and as such, Greenwald should be called out, yes, but also given the benefit of the doubt rather than excoriating condemnations.
So did ABL really — really? — lose all respect for Greenwald simply b/c he dissed an Obama fan-girl inna pissy, overwrought, off-hand remark onna tweet? That’sa purty low bar and says more about ABL than it does Greenwald.
But, one of the grand ‘n enduring ironies of the circular firing squad that is liberal politics (“Hey, ain’t we on the same team?” Bang!) is the irresistable temptation for many to be intemperate, uncharitable souls compelled on to counterproductive action by an overweeing, implacablenecessity for being proven right rather than winning.
Sorta sad.
Sweet Fanny Adams
@David Richey: You should be very happy.
mclaren
@tomvox1:
I’ve asked over and over again what crime Anwar Al-Awlaki has committed under American law.
tomvox1 screamed:
Explain how emailing someone is a crime under American law.
Oh…that’s right — you can’t. Because sending someone an email is not a crime under American law.
So this guy “had contacts” with Al-Awlaki “according to a number of sources.” How is that a crime?
And by the way…”according to a number of sources” is the usual bullshit way of making an insinuation without having to provide any evidence. tomvox1 has raped a number of underaged girls, according to a number of sources. See how easy it is?
What kind of crime is it to “inspire” someone. Point me to the federal statute. Let me see it.
Translation: this fanatic listened to some online sermons. Why is listening to an online sermon a crime? Where’s the statute that says putting a sermon online is a crime? Show me law that says putting sermons online is a crime, let me see it.
That might be a crime, depending on how it was worded. If so, issue an arrest warrant for Al-Awlaki on the basis of making threats online. Then go arrest him. What the hell’s the problem? Obama and company haven’t issued an arrest warrant probably because Al-Awlaki didn’t say anything like that — show me the specific language Al-Awlaki used. If he had said anything like what this paragraph claims he said, the DOJ would’ve issued a warrant. The fact that they didn’t means, as usual, that claims about Al-Awlaki are bullshit and lies made up by ignorant jingoistic kooks who demand the death of anyone who refuses to salute the Murkan Flag.
So Al-Awlaki had “an associate” (translation: someone he probably met somewhere) who was arrest for allegedly planning something. What crime did Al-Awlaki commit? Cite it. Give me the statute number.
Translation: U.S. and British counter-terrorism authorities have no evidence for the claim that Al-Awlaki had any involvement. If they had any evidence, they’d have issued a warrant for Al-Awlaki’s arrest.
In other news, U.S. counter-terrorism authorities suspect tomvox1 may be involved in a plot to detonate creampuffs in “populated areas.” Of course there’s no evidence that tomvox1 has done anything wrong, and there’s no evidence that U.S. counter-terrorism authorities believe or know anything…but since tomvox1 has felt free to spew out unsourced allegations devoid of evidence, turnabout is fair play.
An apt description of yourself, tomvox1.
You have provided not one shred of evidence that Al-Awlaki has committed any crime under American law. All you’ve managed to dredge up is a bunch of bullshit rumors and fantasies and baseless allegations.
According to your crazy “method” of determining whether people have committed crimes, we should issue a death warrant for Barack Obama because Obama:
1) is not a U.S. citizen;
2) is a muslim plotting jihad;
3) is a communist;
4) is a fascist;
5) is involved in a vast conspiracy with leftists to destroy America and set up FEMA concentration camps.
There’s no evidence that any of this bullshit is true and there’s no basis for any of it — it’s all just unsourced rumors and fantasies and wild claims without a shred of proof to back any of it up.
But you can find all these bullshit rumors about Obama on the net.
So according to you, tomvox1, if we google Obama and find all this crap, why, it must be true! No evidence needed! No proof required!
Are you really this stupid and ignorant, tomvox1, or have you been taking lessons?
Allan
@David Richey: It’s funny, ’cause when the cops pull up to a crime scene, they usually jump to the conclusion that the black lady is the offending party too.
WyldPirate
@Mrs. Polly:
Damn but you’re reading impaired and reading way too much into Greenwald’s comments and mind.
Greenwald made a simple, snarky tweet. It wasn’t on the front page of the New York Times and her blogs name wasn’t even mentioned–it was a TinyURL address. I doubt that even most people in this thread ran over to check it out right away, much less the losers that follow Greenwald’s Twitter feeds.
I particularly enjoyed this big-old strawman:
You’ve got a problem Polly–he didn’t say it was Reifenstahlian-level propaganda–you did. But it’s funny where you got that idea, now huh? Troops showing love for Obama? Images? That was what Triumph of the Will focused on now isn’t it? But you’re the one making that contention aren’t you, not Greenwald. You took the imagery and ran with it yourself.
The even bigger conflated strawman with a hose up its ass is that you say “he thinks she is overlooking a Hitlerian amount of evil.” Please. You know what he was thinking how? Psychoanalysis via an under 100 character tweet? Right…Overdramatize much?
Then you follow it up with this:
So tell me Mrs. Contradiction–er, Mrs Polly,–was it an evil Greenwaldian plot with all of the malice of forethought you rail about for three paragraphs or was “it lazy, pissy, shrill and non-thinking”?
Or is that just the depressive vs manic side of you talking shyte?
Or is it–))))shivers((((((–an evil Koch Bros Institute financed plot? And WTF is the paranoia with all of these Koch brother conspiracies? You sound like a more intelligent version of a poster named Elie who accuses people of being paid by the Koch Bros. to make comments here?
OK. That’s cool. But people call you on BS here. She got called out and she’s weaseling out of owning up to her fuck up.
Right. I’m quivering in my boots. A no integrity, non-analogy interpreting, accusation-slinging, red herring-tossing shyster is going to make my screen explode.? OK, if you say so, Mrs. Polly.
Goodnight, Mrs. Polly.
David Richey
@Sweet Fanny Adams:
The sarcasm gene did not skip a generation in either of our families, evidently, so I gather you disagree w/my assessment.
Fair enough.
Not the hill I wanna die on.
soonergrunt
May I say that this thread has just been one giant fucking awesome emo meltdown of epic proportions!
Well done, all around!
soonergrunt
Come on, lets’ push to 500!
WyldPirate
@Allan:
Nah. A dinner date with Greenwald, maybe.
Both would probably consider it a fate worse than death.
chaseyourtail
@David Richey: The problem with your recap is that Greenwald’s heart is not in the right place when he repeatedly behaves like a sneering bully. See, how one cancels out the other?
And if it’s one thing I fucking can’t stand on liberal blogs it’s the overuse of the 1st person plural pronoun, “he’s our dick”. I take no ownership of Greenwald. He’s not “my” anything.
mclaren
@David Richey:
The classic cartoon is by xkcd, incidentally.
I’ll agree that it started out with ABL’s over-the-top overreaction, but this debate very quickly touched on a serious issue.
Namely, we had a bunch of fanatical narrowminded brainwashed kooks rushing forward to excuse and deny and attempt to argue out of existence Obama’s very real and very serious unconstitutional crimes, as well as Obama’s clear betrayal of just about everything he campaigned on.
When Republican fanatics rushed forward to deny that Bush tortured people, and deny that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and deny that the Bush-Cheney presidency was a massive economic clusterfvck and a colossal failure for the middle class, and deny that the war in Iraq was illegal and deny that the war in Afghanistan was being catastrophically lost, and deny that Bush and company were destroying the Bill of Rights and deny that the White House was arrogating powers to itself that only the worst tyrants of history had ever claimed for themselves (like the power to murder people without a trial, the power to torture people, the power to kidnap citizens and hold ’em without trial, the power to hold secret Star Chamber trials with secret evidence that the accused was not allowed to see and secret verdicts that no one was allowed to know except the victim executed for a secret crime which could never be revealed)…well, when the Bush White House did all that shit, everyone here was up in arms about it.
The people who today call themselves Obots were frothing and beating the tables with rage about Bush’s illegal unconstitutional crimes. They were shouting as loudly as they could that Bush’s administration was a colossal economic failure.
Now, when Obama is doing exactly the same things Bush was doing — claiming the same powers, torture, extrajudicial murder, kidnapping people without charges, secret courts with secret evidence for secret crimes, kidnapping U.S. citizens without charges and holding them forever without charges — suddenly these very same people are rushing forward to do the same goddamn thing the Bush supporters did back in 2005 and 2007. They’re denying that these things are crimes. They’re claiming the economy is getting better. They’re claiming that the policies are the best anyone could have come up with under the circumstances. They’re claiming we’re winning our two lost dismal pointless wars.
The people who get called “Obots” are being called that for a reason. Because they are denying facts, denying evidence, ignoring reality, wiping out of existence massive crimes and grotesque incompetence. The people who are being called Obama robots (obots) are indeed acting like robots — they blindly spew out mindless denials and justifications of massive crimes and gross incompetence while utterly ignoring observed reality.
The reality is that the economy is shit and it’s getting worse. The reality is that the CPE deflator has tanked and core inflation is at zero and we’re now tipping into deflation. The reality is that Obama has appointed a huge number of Bush people and he and they are pursuing exactly the same failed policies that Bush did.
And the obots simply deny, deny, deny. The obots merely lie and lie and lie. No, no, no, Obama doesn’t torture, Obama’s speech advocating “preventive detention” is actually a legal way to try to justify kidnapping U.S. citizens and hold ’em forever without a trial. No, no, no, Obama hasn’t actually ordered the murder of Al-Awlaki, just denial after denial after denial of the plain facts.
This is the kind of delusional shit we saw from Republicans in the waning years of the Bush presidency. They just denied everything. They spewed non-stop lies. They twisted themselves into knots of crazy logic in a failed and futile effort to justify unjustifiable atrocities and crimes and incompetence.
So, yes, insofar as that issues has gotten raised, I think it’s important.
A significant number of Democrats are now denying objective reality. They are lying about what Obama is doing, and about what he has done, just as Obama himself turns out to be lying about what he would do, and about what he is doing.
That is actually significant.
Just as a large part of the Republican party has drifted into delusion and fantasy in which they think they can get away with denying global warming is real and denying that Peak Oil is real, a large part of the Democratic party seems to have drifted into an hallucinatory dreamland in which they think they can get away with denying the documented reality of Obama’s tortures and extrajudicial murders and betrayal of almost all his campaign promises.
Mrs. Polly
@WyldPirate:
No, that would have been “Triumph of the Shrill,” by Squiggy Reifenstahl.
Squiggy never did get the recognition he deserved.
the farmer
WyldPirate is Glenn Greenwald’s Squiggy Riefenstahl.
*
David Richey
@mclaren:
Agree that alla the stuff you list is important, but:
Think the temptation is strong for defenders and the disgruntled alike to transform what amounts to a ridiculous dust-up into a proxy war for something much larger.
(The raw nerve in question.)
Once the two issues are conflated into the same critique, it becomes difficult to the point of impossibility to disentangle the small, specific, concrete point being addressed from the larger issue of how one feels about Obama’s performance as president.
imo
Ija
“Our”? Who are you claiming him for? Leftist bloggers who think they invented grass root politics? Leftist bloggers who think the Democratic base consists of them and them alone? Leftist bloggers who think that because they are disenchanted with Obama anyone else who is not is either an Obot or equivalent to Nazi propagandist? Let’s clarify here.
David Richey
@chaseyourtail:
RE: Greenwald’s “heart bein’ in the right place”
Sorry, chaseyertail.
I confused you w/someone who’s never-in-yer-life spoke outta turn or said an unkind, uncharitable word.
It’s street cred like that that keeps you from having your entire life “canceled” out by unwisely letting loose an intemperate word and then digging in yer heels.
Good on you. I know I can’t live up to that high ideal, and I must confess it’s comforting to know there are those who can.
Chuck Butcher
I had a blogger pal nom de plumed Jon Swift who as it turned out was quite a bit more than that. He (and Skippy) were benefactors to “E” rate bloggers from their considerably higher status. Jon treated me with respect, kindness, a gave much more to my efforts than I could back. I had endless respect for his stance and his insight that real people lived behind those blogs, people who made nothing out of trying to be entertaining or informative other than some satisfaction. Jon would be horrified by this kind of mindless cruelty. I get weekly or more reminders of his kindness because the last thing he posted was for me and people keep coming and maybe get something from tragedy.
Fuck you Glenn, fuck you very much. Behind that blog is a gal who wasn’t trying to do more than something nice. You’re a pathetic piece of work to try to ruin that from where you sit. Yeah, it’s real sporting to swat mosquitoes with a 12 gauge. I feel bad for this gal, I sure the hell hope something nice replaces the shit. If there aren’t 100K “E” blogs more offensive to his values he sure hasn’t looked. If it wouldn’t make me the same shit heels I’d wish Glenn got the equal back.
Mrs. Polly
@Chuck Butcher: We so miss Jon Swift. He was lovely, wasn’t he?
@David Richey: So you’re the guy who wrote the menu for Silver Spurs! Wonderful work, particularly the dessert section:
Oh internet. Please stop. I am so tired.
El Tiburon
@mclaren:
Hey Cole, can this guy please replace ABL and ED?
Chuck Butcher
@Mrs. Polly:
I stopped by BWD’s place and left her a comment of support in honor of Jon.
Saccharin to admit it, but I cried writing that above.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: did you say something?
Angry Black Lady
oh darn, i missed my chance. i guess it’s settled then.
ho hum.
Chuck Butcher
@Angry Black Lady:
I wouldn’t have caught this if you hadn’t posted it. thanks, being able to give back a bit of Jon’s means something to me.
And for those who don’t think it is important, yeah – stop every once in a goddammed while and do something for the feelings of just one person. WTF is the use of all this power at our fingers if we can’t once in awhile be nice to somebody even if what they do isn’t our thing. She has a fan site for fans that makes nothing for her beyond a bit of pleasure and a major had to try to ruin that? Fuck me. I wish her pleasure and peace from you assholes that’d ruin it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@soonergrunt:
Are we there yet?
@Angry Black Lady:
BTW, I happen to think the integrity of your persona is just fine. ;)
David Richey
Two posts didn’t make ‘er through, one a reply to Alan and another a reply to lja.
Was wondering: Am I awaiting moderation or simply unwelcome?
Just curious.
Mrs. Polly
@Chuck Butcher: Not saccharine at all.
Blessings on him, and on yourself, if I may be so bold as to endanger other people’s bloodsugar levels. Let’s just declare Monday a Read Swift Day and clean ourselves up, dammit.
El Tiburon
@Angry Black Lady:
Instead of juvenile reponses, why don’t you either ignore the comment if you are going to be childish on response, or answer the damn question.
Also, I went to your site and read the unedited version. Wonder why you omitted the reference to hamsher.
Also, while discussing it, you totally took hamsher’s use of blackface Lieberman out of context. Perhaps you should cut down on all of the anger and take some deep breaths, then make sure your anger is directed in the right direction. Otherwise you do fit in nicely with a lot of the juicers around here.
Allan
@David Richey: Both can be true.
matoko_chan
wow…..what an awesome thread.
i <3 ABL
she takes it personal.
Angry Black Lady
@David Richey: wow, you hit all the derailing goal posts with that one! i’m too sensitive. i’m too angry. i’m too emotional. it’s only the internet.
mylanta! it’s like a who’s who of privilege up in here.
or is it who’s whom? i struggle with grammar, ya see, and i just don’t know which is proper.
ho hum.
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
Angry Black Lady
@El Tiburon: i’ve answered the question. moreover i’ve fully explained why i will not engage with certain commenters. it is you who chooses to ignore what i have to say so you can continue to stake your flag on fuck mountain.
newsflash: i don’t answer to you.
my breathing is perfectly fine, but thank you for your concern.
check your privilege and don’t presume to know anything about me.
Yes That Danielle
@mclaren
We get that you’re smart. Congratulations. However, your use of language veers out of the realm of smart and into the murky bog of pretension. So, shut the fuck up already.
Odie Hugh Manatee
And… I help to push it to the 500 mark!
Wow ABL, you hit the 300, 400 and now the 500 post club and all in one post! You sure that you aren’t the Awesome Black Lady instead of Angry?
mbss
mclaren on fire.
archive this shit.
angry black lady thank you for eliciting that response. without you this never would have been possible.
Mazel Tov
A Humble Lurker
@WyldPirate:
There’s a time when a Hitler comparison isn’t bad? Or at the very least extremely lazy and hackneyed?
amk
@WyldPirate:
Your obsession with bwd and her blog is pretty fucking creepy. You must be one of those kossacks who drop shitty, meaningless posts in her dkos diaries.
David Richey
I’ve written three posts and attempted to post them several times each over the course of the last hour or so. None of which have been posted. None of which are objectionable or profane. All of which are substantive replies to posts directed to me, one of which is a reply to ABL herself.
Someone in moderation, I fear, is acting in a rather cowardly fashion.
Sad.
amk
@mclaren: You seem to be in the wrong blog. Your perfect poutrage will make kossacks swoon. Run along.
Angry Black Lady
@David Richey: certain comments automatically go into moderation. i’ll go unmoderate them. settle down.
ETA: there aren’t any comments in mod. ::shrug:: i’m going to sleep, people. remember, safety first. then teamwork.
David Richey
Allan @471 sez:
_____________________________
Wow.
Perhaps, Allan, you are one of those uncharitable souls who are quick to take offense and impute motives w/o addressing a point substantively?
Allan, I’ll make it direct so we don’t misunderstand e/o. Either you can’t read or I can’t write. Two points.
One: Yes, I believe ABL overreacted wildly, but perhaps you missed where I conceded that Greenwald was both the instigator and in the wrong?
And two: There’s a purty big difference betwixt:
Being an intemperate scold because you are black (the implication you appear — if so, incorrectly) to be making of my point,
versus:
Being an intemperate scold and being (coincidentally but irrelevantly) black.
It’sa distinction w/a difference, Allan, and only a willful misreading of my point could miss it. That you appear intent upon imputing a racial slur onto my motives (just for lagniappe!) only diminishes you further.
amk
@mclaren: You claim that obots are denying the obama reality. Then later you claim majority of democrats are also denying the same reality. So if both obots and majority of the dems are denying that reality, then you must be in that delusional minority that believes in crap about obama.
Ija
If someone, whoever it is you are accusing here, is supposed to be a coward, why would this comment go through? Surely someone would also block comments calling him/her a coward?
Rhoda
@mclaren: Your major problem is with the American public IMO; you can attack Obama for Being Bush on torture and it won’t matter. He came in with trying to shut down Guantanamo and that flamed out spectacularly for a solid reason.
Same reason he voted for FISA, IMO.
There are just some lines you can’t cross and some shit that doesn’t get undone with a quickness; Japanesse Americans interned during WWII and AA soliders after the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Korea could tell you some stories.
*****
As for GG, fuck him.
Cole’s wrong, this isn’t an over the top reaction. It’s just not. It’s become acceptable to demean and dehumanize the President to a level that is beyond what I saw with Bush. Bush was stupid and that and sniggering about his daddy issues were what I saw. With Obama, I read a piece by Courtland Milloy (a black man) regurgitating MoDo and Kathleen Parker, checking the weak meme, then saying if another black boy grows up to be just like Obama he won’t be able to call himself a black man.
I read this shit were Obama is being blamed for Congress’ fuckups so completely; that now it’s passed into the MSM’s handling of the issue.
I don’t give a fuck about GG, Hamsher, and Co. But I agree with Denis, racism IMO comes in all forms and the irrationality and the need to blame the black man for every damn thing is an oldie and a goodie for this nation.
That Onion story was prescient and God-damned Rush Limbaugh was right; people did think they were getting a Magic Negro. Limbaugh does seem to understand something fundamental that I missed; fuck him too.
WhatAreWeDoing
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the criticism from the left is 100%, 50% or 0% correct, the environment we live in right now is one where right wing media and the corporate world is HYPO, HYPO critical of Republicans and HYPER, HYPER critical of Obama and Democrats, while the left leaning media is just HYPER, HYPER critical of Obama and Democrats
I think Maureen Dowd nailed it when she said, that Fox News built up a Republican president while MSNBC is tearing down a Democratic one.
I think that Reagan’s weakening of labor, made it that much harder for Clinton, who was forced to buckle, then Bush did tremendous damage while the public was distracted with 9/11, making it even that much harder for Obama, while our whining that he can not make the Senate do what we want is just making it that much harder for the next Democrat.
I feared we were in trouble when at the very beginning of the Obama administration, after talk of closing Gitmo, the GOP started their, ‘Obama will release terrorists who want to chop off your child’s head, into your child’s schoolyard’, and the media never corrected them, and Democrats turned their backs on Obama, saying, “Not in MY state”.
I then felt despair when the media began to cover the tea party people as though they were a grass roots majority instead of the same malcontents who were yelling “Terrorist!!” at the Palin rallies of 2008, while we sat back whining.
I fear the result will simply be a far right wing, 7-2 SCOTUS, and an even further right wing Congress and WhiteHouse, if we don’t get OUR act together.
David Richey
lja:
Tried to sneak my reply to ABL onto my reply to you as an add-on. It was flagged as spam. fwiw, I edited the post once before I tried to add-on the reply to ABL onto my reply to you and it reposted w/o problem.
Make of that what you will.
Can’t prove nothin’, but it sure seems like someone don’t wanna see that post posted.
David Richey
And now, in addition to my replies to ABL and lja not being permitted to be posted, both comments 510 and 513 have been stricken (tho’ this one replaces the one formerly at 513). Nice.
Both of the latter posts made the point that the moderator is acting like the person on Rush Limbaugh’s show in charge of muting inconvenient opposition. Thanks for proving my point.
Keep digging. You’ll hit rock-bottom yet.
Stay classy, moderator.
David Fud
Wow, that was fun.
Angry Black Lady
damn insomnia. my sleep schedule is ass backwards.
@David Richey: listen here: as i told you an hour ago, some comments go into mod. i don’t know why. some words are buzzwords, i think. any comments with links probably go into mod. i don’t have any control of that, ya dig? what i can do is check the pending comments to see if any are there. none where there.
but i’m pretty sure i did see tupac back there. make of that what you will. i don’t moderate comments on my blog. i don’t moderate over here since i’m just a guest here.
To everyone else:
had i known that cole and glenn had some sort of correspondence relationship, i would have thought twice before cross-posting this.
this whole discussion is run the gamut of batshit insane to downright hilarious.
But here’s what i’ve gathered:
i’m a shyster. i am juvenile. i should smoke a red herring (i think?) i’m over emotional. i don’t know what an analogy is. i’m too angry. it’s just the internet, what’s the big deal? why are you so offended. obama is reaching pol pot/stalin/hitler status. don’t you have something more interesting to get angry about? i don’t like your name; it says “Angry Black” in it. you write funny. someone may or may not be drinking my milkshake. i’m wielding oz-like power over the comment moderation system. my blog post is so important that some are demanding a retraction. i may be senator durbin, or at least have durbin-like influence. if i don’t own up to “what i did” — whatever the hell that even is — then i have no integrity which is to be expected since i’m a lawyer, and a lady one at that; so my being assertive and refusing to say “uncle” in the face of what i view as meritless (and often asinine) attack means that i’m some sort of hysterical person hell bent on throwing a hissy fit.
does that cover it everyone?
jesus. go smoke a bowl or something. the world is not out to get you. this isn’t the end of days. i have an opinion. you have a different one. let’s move on, shall we?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Angry Black Lady:
Damn, I am smoking some good shit and I agree with you. Don’t tell me i have to quit!
David Richey
__________________
Apologies to Apocalypse Now, but God, how I dislike the smell of pissy projection in the morning.
And it’s rather precious how you now, having acted inna dismissive, petulant manner all evening long, now wanna move on.
OK, fine, let’s move on. But just an observation, fwiw:
I suspect you’ve gained cred w/yer apologist reactionary ditto-heads and lost it w/people who get annoyed by bad-faith argumentation.
Ought to be used to the latter by now, but I gets sorta discouraged seeing it displayed so prominently onna blog I enjoys readin’.
Mike from Philly
Sorry but that website IS kind of creepy. These people are elected leaders, this kind of celebrity worship just encourages the kind of “we can do whatever we want to these assholes” behavior we’ve seen from Team Obama.
Also, Glenn’s done more good with this writing than any of your foul mouthed screeds will likely ever accomplish (so fuck YOU very much ha!). Whether he’s off base on this particular issue or not (I personally agree with him), the fact of the matter is we’ll be talking about Greenwald in 25 years. You…not as much I’ll bet.
matoko_chan
Obama should come clean or resign, she says helpfully.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@David Richey:
Hang around here a bit and you’ll find that the very same people you rip on as “apologist reactionary ditto-heads” will tear right into ABL or any other FP’er they disagree with. Yes, there are many opinions here and FP’ers are both agreed and disagreed with. It happens. I really have to laugh when the alleged mindless sycophants of one FP’er later tear into that same FP’er because they, of all things, don’t like what they said. People who dismiss BJ as some kind of hive mind haven’t been paying attention, can’t read or just arrived here.
Here at BJ we all proudly agree to disagree.
Ija
Also, Glenn’s done more good with this writing than any of your foul mouthed screeds will likely ever accomplish (so fuck YOU very much ha!). Whether he’s off base on this particular issue or not (I personally agree with him), the fact of the matter is we’ll be talking about Greenwald in 25 years.
Funny, if anybody says something like this about Obama, the scream of Obot would be deafening. But because it’s Saint Glenn, it’s okay, it’s fact based, reality based, puppy and kittens, sugar and spice and all that good stuff. Face it, Glenn has his own Glenn-o-bot as well.
noho
Amusing thread …
As just about everyone here acknowledges by now, Greenwald is a pretty massive a-hole, and has always been one. Even when I agreed with him, I always thought that his attacks on certain reporters and public figures were always over-the-top. I mean, to criticize them is one thing, but they would make one wrong move and he would denounce them as Satan. And of course, he is a terrible writer by any standard. Anyway, now he is using those tactics on people we like (Obama, bloggers who post pictures of Obama) with the same idiotic hyperbolic language, and it’s p–ing us off. This was a very predictable development.
And all the Glenntal Greentards in this thread amuse me … it’s okay for him to compare a lowly blogger to a Nazi propagandist. But now ABL calls Dear Blogger on out on something, and it’s “Leave Glenn Greenwald a-l-one!”
tomvox1
@mclaren:
Yeah, Obama should probably have crossed his i’s and dotted his t’s on Al-Awlaki just like they handled Gadahn and that is a legitimate argument about process. But there’s no doubt about Al-Awlaki’s culpability, so you can stop rending your garments. There is no doubt that Al-Awlaki has engaged in Treason with a capital “T.” Nice to see you’ve got his back though, hoss. After all the hot air you’ve spewed I sincerely hope you that you are not some college idealist sitting in his underwear between bouts of masturbation and are somehow active in convincing the government to remove him from the targeted list and properly charge him with treason so he can have his day in court. You know, petitions presented to elected officials, attempts to raise the legality of targeted executions in a more public forum, spending time and capital on mounting a vigorous public campaign to have Al Awlaki properly tried in Federal Court for his obvious crimes against the USA, volunteering for the lawyers preparing his defense. But then maybe you think Al-Awlaki is completely innocent of any crime just by dint of your intense dislike of current American foreign policy and the Obama administration’s stand on civil liberties. Maybe you even believe what Al-Awlaki is calling for is justified…
MattMinus
Jane Hamsher is old and white and stuff, so there.
Ija
@MattMinus: Was anybody bashing Hamsher because she is white? I must have missed it.
eemom
@David Richey:
great, cuz in that case you’re about the most ecstatic fellow on the planet. enjoy.
eemom
@chaseyourtail:
tee hee. Don’t have a dick myself, but if I did, you may rest assured it most certainly would not be Greenwald.
mikefromArlington
Glenn Greeenwald
Glen Beck
Nazi comparisons.
I’m detecting a dickish pattern.
Angry Geometer
I love you, Angry Black Lady.
eemom
This too is most interesting. He made sure to forbid you to say a mean word about Lady Jane, but neglected to even mention that he and GG are freaking pen pals and that every time the word “Greenwald” appears in a FP post on this blog alarms go off in every lizard brain on the blogosphere??
sheeeyit. This is some serious awesomesauce.
What is her secret, do ya think? Does she have a trophy collection of disembodied testicles over her mantelpiece?
sparky
agreed, sadly. i guess agreeing with him makes me a douchebag.
@David Richey: seems pretty accurate to me, with the exception that some people actually started conversing after they’d blown off steam. maybe there is hope for the intertubz after all.
ps: if i may, i think you were too quick to impute a motive to your comments getting messed up in moderation.
@mclaren: true. but i confess i can’t see how attacking them head-on here is going to get them to change their minds. what am i missing?
ps: i think you are mistaken about Cole. he doesn’t post about Obama’s escalation/codification/approval of the National Security State (elective authoritarianism? war pron?) nearly as much as i would like, but he does post about it from time to time.
yes i know my remarks here could be construed as a suck-up but they aren’t. i think he is wrong from time to time but he is honest, and that, sadly, is a pretty rare quality these days. also he is still pretty damn good at snark. i just wish he’d point it at the Empire rather than at the shiny shiny flotsam the Empire gins up every day.
for that matter, i wish Tim F would come back and do more of the posts he did during Jr’s reign. the US needs those more now than then.
Mnemosyne
@David Richey:
Yes, I’m sure that your random maunderings were so threatening to ABL that she was secretly deleting your comments. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the incredibly crappy commenting system that means that half the people end them with FYWP.
You really must be new around here if you didn’t know that, and yet you’ve already made yourself look like a whiny, paranoid asshole by insisting that something that happens to everyone here must have been directed specifically at you. Congratulations.
kay
Interesting post, ABL. Good for you for going there.
For my part, I feel as if there’s some confusion (reading the comments) about Glenn Greenwald’s role.
Washington (CNN) – Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday declared that Justice Department lawyers, criticized for past representation of Guantanamo Bay prison detainees, are patriots who deserve to be praised.
These 9 are civil rights lawyers.
Not anymore, they’re now on the state side, but every one of them stepped up at great personal and career risk and defended detainees when the whole country was screaming for blood.
There’s a huge difference between civil rights commentary and civil rights work.
Only one involves skin in the game, real risk, and the other doesn’t. Commentary may be valuable, but it isn’t the same thing.
Frank
Lord, count me among your former readers now, John.
This is silly and angry. And you are right, ABL, you are an asshole.
Enjoy being like the Catholic Church – ideologically pure, yet still vulgar, offensive, and decreasingly attended or relevant.
[deleted from RSS feeds]
chopper
this just reminds me why i don’t read glenn anymore. if he thought a random jewish two-bit blogger is like the chief propagandist for the nazis, he needs to walk away from the computer for a while.
what i love about these threads tho, they make wyldie go full retard. people with histrionic personality disorder gotta stick together i guess.
chopper
@Frank:
uh oh guys, ‘frank’ is leaving.
sparky
and now for my retraction.
Greenwald’s tweet came up earlier yesterday in a thread. in that thread i said that i thought GG was in effect trolling for people to fall into a trap that he had discussed in an earlier posting about Godwin’s law. after reading that posting, and looking at the wiki page about it (which, IIRC specifically exempted propaganda from the law’s purview) i thought GG was just making a sneaky bon mot. at that time, i was not aware he had made his retraction (or however one wishes to characterize it; analysis of it is not relevant here).
when i saw ABL’s post, i thought, yow, this seems a bit over the top. reading down, i found that ABL had posted (thanks!) that GG had effected a retreat. so, my analysis in that other thread was wrong, because his “retraction” invalidated my line of inference.
by way of explanation, i did not make those inferences because i think Greenwald is the best thing since sliced bread; i did so because being somewhat familiar with his (sometimes unfortunate) heavy-handed sense of sarcastic humor, i inferred, incorrectly, that he was having a kind of meta funny. i was wrong.
i’m not going to opine on Greenwald’s tweet or what it “meant”, other than (1) the best thing that can be said about it is that it was an unnecessary, ugly-seeming error and (2) i am at a loss as to comprehending the notion that a mistake like this invalidates everything else he has ever written. i could make an inference, about #2, but as i blew it yesterday i think i will hold off.
at least for a few minutes.
Allan
@David Richey: I’m so glad you took the time to reconstruct this mysteriously and suspiciously vanished post, so that I could respond and say that you appear to have me confused with someone who cares what an internet troll thinks of him.
Something tells me that you’re going to be a very special snowflake in the BJ He-Man Obama Hater’s Club.
Allan
@sparky:
Um, because that’s how Greenwald operates against his enemies (a.k.a. everyone who isn’t Greenwald), and we’re just giving him a taste of his own medicine?
Marc McKenzie
@WhatAreWeDoing: My thoughts exactly.
I did not vote for Obama because I thought we were going to have a utopia in two months. I voted for him because, to be brutally harsh and realistic, there was no other viable option present at the time of the general election. Sitting there pouting, waiting for some spotless liberal lamb would do nothing. And I had had it with Nader.
I also realized that he was going to be going into a tough slog, and that cleaning up the mess left by Bush (which was really Reaganomics 2.0) would be a difficult task, and that Obama would be laying the groundwork. It’s giong to take years.
Two years later, and we’re ready to throw him under the bus, along with anyone who says, “Be patient, and get ready for a long battle.” Long live the microwave society and it’s “30 seconds or less” rule. And Greenwald just doesn’t seem to get it. Yes, it’s nice to sit there and call down the moralistic thunder, but this…no, it went too far. It seems–at least to my eyes–that Greenwald and others like him live in a parallel reality that is separate from the real world, where politics is dirty, ugly thing…and the only way to do something about it is to dive in and try to wade through the mess.
But he has it easy–Greenwald, I mean. Just sit at your keyboard and fire off words. No need to get your hands dirty, and you can stand above it all.
Obama isn’t above criticism–but none of us are, either…and that includes Glen Greenwald.
sparky
@Allan: ok, and thank you for responding. i have no interest in starting anything (see mea culpa above), but i remain puzzled (and no that’s not a bad-faith ploy).
here’s why:
first, i see the block-quoted notion repeated here all the time, and yet i still don’t understand how it arose. i read Greenwald frequently and aside from bashing people as “Obots” or “syncophants of Dear Leader” or whatever he’s using these days (i read him, not his comments), he has AFAIK always responded to substantive (fact-based) critiques <with substantive responses. i have also seen him mention (credit) an adversary when that adversary on other points agrees with him on the point at hand. i understand not agreeing with his responses, or for that matter his point of view, but i just don’t know of any behaviour of the kind you seem to mean. if you do, please post a link.
second, the guy makes a [insert adjective of choice here] tweet and the stuff that’s been posted here is “giving him a taste of his own medicine”? seriously? ok, leaving that aside, that’s not really the same thing as saying everything else he writes is worthless.
third, who might this “we” be? i’m ok with not being a member of the club, if there is one, but i admit it would be nice to know if there is one.
edited for clarity and add: as far as style and whatnot goes, yes i think he could benefit a bit from working with a good editor. prolixity obscures does not invalidate an argument.
David Richey
@Mnemosyne:
______________
Tain’t paranoid. I am new. And no, I don’t know what FYWP is, so if whatever FYWP is explains why:
I was repeatedly (over the course of two hours) unable to post replies to: first, Allan, next Ija, and finally ABL (even thru her slip to slumber and return bout of insomnia and beyond!), then great. The posts in question, after seeming to go thru the first time, never appeared, then they were repeatedly rejected w/each subsequent attempt, the site saying the posts already existed. Except they didn’t.
The site still won’t accept my replies to Ija and ABL (and no, I am under no pretensions that they are anything but garden-variety disagreement unlikely to wow anyone), but my post to Allan @507 finally did go thru (just took an hour and a half!).
And, peculiarly enough, when I did experiment by adding my rejected reply to ABL as a tack-on to an already existing post (as part of the edit process), the post suddenly said the inclusion (i.e. the tack-on) was spam and would not allow the addition. Nothing else was excised, just the repeatedly rejected ABL reply. Go figure.
So, dunno. If you can explain that, great. If not, no worries, prolly ain’t yer job. It’s very possible, even likely, that there’s a simple explanation for alla that. I just dunno what it is.
Course, ABL proved to be such a thin-skinned petulant reactionary whiner determined, imo, to argue in bad faith, that I wondered aloud, if not unfairly then certainly unwisely, if the moderator was denying my ability to post. It ain’t exactly unheard of.
As to the FYWP you are referring to, correct me if I’m wrong, but is FYWP something on the order of comments being voted off by posters? (I.e. As distinguished from the above, where comments are being rejected w/o posting? And yes, I noticed — but did not use — the option on the right next-door to the “edit” option, “Request Deletion” — perhaps this is what yer talkin’ about for FYWP?) If so, that’s sort’va different kettle of fish. I did have two consecutive posts stricken, so perhaps this was the FYWP voting offa the island dealio you mention?
In any event, I am prepared to apologize for conjecturing as to why the site will not (and still will not, as of now), allow me to post the two replies in question while I can post seemingly anything else.
I don’t understand it, and would be delighted to be enlighted, but I confess I was wrong to conjecture.
Allan
@sparky:
By “we” I am referring to we “Obots” or “sycophants of Dear Leader,” which slanderous terms render anything else Glennie says unworthy of my deeper attention. I’m just tribal enough that being sneered at with contempt doesn’t make me want to roll up my sleeves and dive headlong into 10,000 word character assassination pieces.
That you blithely dismiss such bad form as just Glenn being Glenn, don’t look at those tweets over there, nothing to see, move along, tells me that you’re more tolerant of assholes than I, or at least extremely tolerant of “your team’s” assholes.
Bella Q
@ David Richey
FYWP is an acronym for the editorial comment on the word press comment system. From that information its meaning should be clear. The system sometimes sends comments into WPlimbo, and ethereal place from which some comments emerge unscathed, and some never return. With no input from the will of the commentariat, or the blog proprietor, or a front pager. It just happens.
Often, it happens for no apparent reason. Hence FYWP.
YAFB
@David Richey:
Since you’re obviously befuddled, David Richey, I’ll step in as other commenters here are probably exhausted with you by now and I’ve been following the thread enough to not be devoid of pity for them.
FYWP is an abbreviation signifying Fuck You WordPress. It refers to the seemingly random temperamentality of the WordPress commenting system that renders commenting on blogs that rely on it something of a black art.
The fact that you were so rapidly intent on attributing bad motives to some anonymous “moderator”–and I think there’s been more than a repeated inference from you that it was ABL herself doing the censoring, for which it would be nice if you were to offer her a personal apology– who you seemed to imagine had nothing better to do with their life than sitting there waiting for your next response in order to screw it up says a lot. About you, not the blog, or its blogware, or the frontpagers. Seriously, (1) get a grip, (2) get a life, and (3) get a sense of proportion. In any particular order.
Have a nice day.
sparky
@David Richey: comments go into moderation for all kinds of reasons. IIRC it took the people who take care of the site a long time to determine that “socia—-” was too similar to a certain male-related product and that dozens of posts were lost.
so yeah, i don’t think it’s any kind of action other than the usual mishaps, especially given the viewership/posting increases here over time.
oh, and i always thought that FYWP meant fuck you word press but as we’ve seen i could be wrong. that’s the way i’ve interpreted it, at any rate.
ps: sometimes there is a certain proprietary air that is displayed in some of the threads here. feature, so to speak of a rather freewheeling, though not anarchic, blog.
FeFiFo
Sorry, I’m with GG on this one, hyperbole aside. The man has painstakingly detailed how Obama is even worse than his predecessor with regards to civil liberties – GG’s admitted priority – and to contrast the reality of Obama’s actions against a lovesick blogger’s constant fetishizing would probably raise my bile as well.
Obama’s a corporate sellout and a sellout to the military industrial complex, and he has blood on his hands. Fire away, Glenn.
David Richey
Allan
____________________
When you gots the facts, pound the facts.
When you ain’t go no facts, pound the table.
Seems to me it takes a special kind of reactionary hysterical churl to immediately show his ass and embarrass himself by imputing unfounded racism upon another poster for simply disagreeing w/his point of view (see #507 if innerested), then ignores all substantive disagreement, then offers nothing in his follow-up, and instead finishes w/a dismissive flourish of flaccid insult.
Lame, Allan. Really, really lame. You’ve learned well from ABL (or she from you).
MBunge
@FeFiFo: The man has painstakingly detailed how Obama is even worse than his predecessor with regards to civil liberties – GG’s admitted priority
Sometimes firefighters decide to let a fire burn itself out because trying to extinguish it would be too dangerous or costly. According to the standards of The Last Honest Man, those firefighters are even worse than the arsonist who started the blaze in the first place.
I will say that the one function Greenwald serves in the blogosphere is that he makes one appreciate the relative maturity of Andrew Sullivan, of all people. Sullivan’s loathing of Obama on DADT and such is at least the equal of Greenwald on civil liberties, but Sully doesn’t let that contaminate his view of Obama in everything else.
mike
FeFiFo
A further thought on the Nazi propaganda charge and its implications:
There’s two parts to that phrase. Nazi, and propaganda. The propaganda part is what I think GG was focusing on, and how similar propaganda was utilized by the Nazi party (and they utilized a lot of things that are still in use today). The tactic – look at this noble leader doing good things, over and over and over again, with zero depth provided – utilized in service of glossing over serious and severe defects in character and policy.
Were there bloggers that loved Dubya and Laura and the twins and did nothing but post wholesome photos of them? I’m positive there were, hell there’s still Dubya photo threads on Free Republic. Same thing. GG probably didn’t have a chance to tweet about them because Twitter wasn’t around during Dubya’s heyday, and he was a touch busy what with all the illegal occupations and torture to cover.
But what makes me more irked about Obama worship compared to Bush worship is that the left should, arguably, know better than to fall for it out of our side. As mentioned, Obama’s no winner when it comes to civil liberties and he’s abandoned primary promises to restore transparency, close Gitmo, etc. Plus he threw his weight around to get Spain to pressure their judicial branch to drop charges against Bush for war crimes. There’s nothing there to hero worship, if you’re not a complete hypocrite.
FeFiFo
@MBunge: Weaksauce excuse and ridiculous analogy. Primary Candidate Obama certainly promised he could accomplish all that and more. And he’s done very little to put out the fire, unless you call tossing gasoline on the mix out of a bucket labeled “water” a fireman’s job.
http://whatinthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com has an excellent rundown, plus cites, if you doubt his civil liberty violations aren’t just as appalling as what Bush managed to accomplish. But, he’s supposedly on “our” side, so GG’s the bad guy for sticking to principles that we got so riled up over when it was Bush running roughshod.
I’m sorry you’re putting civil liberties on the same plateau of importance as DADT. I’m not willing to throw in the towel on that one quite yet just because its Team Blue instead of Team Red.
MBunge
@FeFiFo: The propaganda part is what I think GG was focusing on
Then why include the Nazi reference?
Mike
MBunge
@FeFiFo: Weaksauce excuse and ridiculous analogy.
Has Obama ordered people to be tortured?
Mike
FeFiFo
@MBunge:
He covered up people being tortured by the CIA: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/world/10tapes.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
He’s continued renditions of alleged terrorists to countries where they would be tortured: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html
He blocked the release of evidence of torture: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/president-oba-5.html
Continued the practice of indefinite detentions for alleged terrorists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html
Shall I continue or is this close enough for you?
Allan
@David Richey: Let’s see… someone unfamiliar with BJ turns up for the first time in a thread taking on libertarian purity icon Glenn Greenwald at about the 470 comment mark in order to restart what was at that time a dying thread by reiterating the Greenwald fanboy charge that the aggrieved party in this clusterfuck is neither BWD or ABL, but Glenn Greenwald, immediately starts making unsubstantiated allegations of nefarious comment moderation as evidence of heavy-handed totalitarianism and silencing, despite said prior unfamiliarity with the site’s ongoing tech issues, and continues to argue the case against ABL, as if anyone gives a fuck what someone unknown to this community and unfamiliar with its norms thinks about her post.
These are my reasons for failing to give your comments any serious consideration or caring about the opinions you express.
David Richey
sparky, Bella Q and YAFB:
If unaware, will refer you to #542, wherein I apologize to the blog community for conjecturing, which I freely confess was wrong. And thank you all for your input re: posts and how they oft-disappear down the memory hole. And thanks even to you, YAFB, you sweetheart of the rodeo, with whom I’m already exhausted after just one post!
See? We have common ground!
sparky
@Allan:
i wrote this:
apparently, according to you, what i meant was this:
seriously?
and if you are serious, can you please tell me what the code-book is and where i can get a copy? i thought my words meant, well, you know, more or less what they usually mean. if i am wrong, or if for some reason when i put them together like that they invoke the Devil, please help me out here. (unless of course Greenwald is the Devil, which might explain things.)
hmmm. ok, let’s assume that you are correct for purposes of this comment, AND let’s assume Greenwald is an asshole.* what does being an asshole have to do with the value of Greenwald’s writing?
to clarify the point a bit, let’s haul out the old argument here: lots of talented** people are assholes. does that fact destroy the value of their accomplishments?
*no doubt i am a moran [sic], but i am (sigh) unclear as to the relevance of my tolerance for assholes to what i thought was my original question. then again, perhaps i need a decoder for all of my sentences. either way, i can assume the point for uh discussion purposes.
**to forestall the inevitable snarky objection here, i am NOT saying Greenwald is talented. i am asking if that proposition, namely that being an asshole invalidates all of an individual’s accomplishments is true for all individuals regardless of accomplishments.
i AM asking for it, ain’t i?
DaBomb
Keep fighting the good fight ABL. I just skimmed a good majority of this. Now the trolls are pissed.
Most of these supposed “progressives” will just their keep pounding on their keyboards and sending their opinions into irrevelance.
Nothing wrong with constructive criticism of the President, but the racial dogwhistles within the left flank has been a site to behold. Over at DKOS, some diarist decided to write a post entitled(paraphrasing), “If Obama keeps messing up, white people won’t ever trust black people anymore…”
It’s a really sad state of affairs. The left is like an animal stuck in a trap trying to eat off its limb to get free.
And of course the obvious trolls came out to wave their troll flag.
Oh and watch out about being offended by a troll’s dumb comment, because apparently it makes you look stupid to be offended.
Keep with up the good work dear!
FeFiFo
@MBunge: You know what, there’s so much more that it really deserves another post.
Obama has…
Dramatically increased government secrecy, blocking more FOIA requests in 2009 than Bush did in 2008: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/obamas-broken-promise-fed_n_500526.html
Announced a $60 billion sale of arms to the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, the largest arms deal in history: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20016181-503543.html
Won the right to invoke “state secrets” protecting the Bush administration from criminal prosecution: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/08/obama/index.html
Authorized the assassination of US citizens abroad, an unprecedented declaration of executive power: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?hp
Fought for government immunity in prosecutions for domestic spying: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush
Dramatically increased the use of drone bombers in Pakistan, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7361630/One-in-three-killed-by-US-drones-in-Pakistan-is-a-civilian-report-claims.html
Won the right to keep identities of prisoners at Bagram “black site” a secret: http://pubrecord.org/world/8445/hiding-obama-administration-defending/
At least Bush has the lack of self-awareness to admit to war crimes. Obama’s smart enough to know he had to lie about civil liberties in order to get elected, and some of you people are still falling for it.
FeFiFo
@MBunge: My other two comments that included links are stuck in the moderation queue, so until they show up: Yes, he’s covered up torture, argued against prosecution for torture, and continues to facilitate torture.
YAFB
@David Richey:
You owe ABL personally an apology for your repeated insinuations that she would be petty enough to censor your endless maunderings.
eemom
@kay:
Kay, this is so excellent that it pains me to see it defiled by its surroundings.
It is the single true response to the ridiculous charade that is Glenn Greenwald, and stated so beautifully, with a dignity that his petty little essence could never comprehend.
Zuzu's Petals
@David Richey:
FYWP means F_ You WordPress. It and other mysterious BJ terms are defined in the Lexicon on the right hand side of the page.
No, there is no voting-other commenters-off option here. If there was, you would have seen a vote tag appear on each comment.
I don’t know how many people have to explain to you that we have ALL had our comments – and edits – sucked into the WordPress black hole for no apparent reason, but I’ll add my voice to the mix: dude, get over yourself.
FeFiFo
@DaBomb: I’m as big of an anti-fascist as anyone else, but there’s no racial dog whistle in Godwinning, and criticizing Obama on his massive civil liberties failures is an exercise in which one can find more than enough concrete evidence to support their argument.
MBunge
@sparky: what does being an asshole have to do with the value of Greenwald’s writing?
Quite a bit, actually.
1. Part of GG’s assholishness is that while he usually starts with facts, he interprets what those facts mean. That’s fine, but then he viciously attacks anyone who interprets those facts in a different manner. In fact, he usually doesn’t even acknowledge that the facts CAN be interpreted in a different way to support a different conclusion. Defining the terms of debate so that you and only you can be right is fairly assholish.
2. The other thing is that there is usually a big political dimension to what GG writes about and being an asshole, especially a liberal asshole, can be a pretty big problem in electoral politics. Before anyone can do any of the things that GG wants done in civil liberties and beyond, they have to win elective office or at least be appointed by someone who wins an election. GG couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in a town with a population of 3 people and 10,000 dogs.
Mike
MBunge
@FeFiFo: Yes, he’s covered up torture, argued against prosecution for torture, and continues to facilitate torture.
So the answer is George W. Bush ordered people to be tortured and Barack Obama hasn’t.
Mike
FeFiFo
@MBunge:
1. You’ll have to be a little more specific in your criticism, because GG’s discussion of the abysmal Obama civil liberties record has been pretty cut and dried from what I’ve heard.
2. You neglect the point that Obama himself was elected partially on a platform of restoring transparency and repairing the damage done by Bush on the civil liberties front. And he’s completely abandoned it post-election.
Allan
@sparky: Yes, you did write those words, along with the words I block-quoted and to which I was responding in my comment. You were the one who was dismissive of GG’s assholish behavior because you find his posts to have value. I was saying that his assholish behavior toward people who support the President is a dealbreaker FOR ME, that it stops ME from caring to sift through his voluminous chaff in search of a grain of wheat. It’s not for you. That’s why I’m saying you have a higher tolerance for his assholery than, for example, mine. You’re on a team too, even if you believe yourself to be above such tribal instincts.
Zuzu's Petals
@kay:
Two snaps up!
FeFiFo
@MBunge: What part of continuing to export accused terrorists to black ops sites to be tortured doesn’t count as torture in your book? Do you think Bush grabbed himself a pair of pliers and went to town personally on these detainees?
noho
The point is, his WRITING, which is all we know him from, is asshole-ish. Maybe he’s swell otherwise. That’s not the point. It’s not like Mick Jagger is a great songwriter but isn’t nice to his family. Glenn Greenwald may or may not be obnoxious person. But he is clearly an obnoxious writer.
You choose to read writers who are a-hole-ish in their writing. That is a choice. But perhaps you understand why other people might not be so enthusiastic.
David Richey
YAFB @559 sez:
________________
Actually, no, I don’t. I almost included a response to you directly in my previous post re: the personal apology bit you suggested, but thought, no, YAFB won’t be able to refrain from pouncing on the omission. Which I thought would be purty funny.
And you don’t disappoint! Go you!
To begin with, I confess I find it sorta ironic that you are insisting I owe an apology to a person who is adamant that she, even after acting like an (admitted) asshole and arguing petulantly and in bad faith, inna dismissive, disrespectful manner, never engages anyone’s substantive points (sorta like clown-shoes Allan!), still, ABL owes no one an apology. This I find sorta hysterical. In both senses of the word.
That said, had ABL not acted in the above-described manner, then sure, I would extend an apology to whomever the moderator happens to be (not a given that ABL is the moderator, and your inference that I implied that she was is just that, your — incorrect, and uncharitable — inference). Go you!
Am delighted there’s another explanation for lost posts, but to think that anyone as (demonstrably) petulant and thin-skinned and unfair in her argumentation as ABL is is somehow incapable of deleting comments in which she’d look just as small and silly and desperate as Allan does in #507 ain’t that far of a stretch. Ain’t exactly unheard of.
When wrong, I apologize. I did so. Can ABL say anything similar re: her wild overreaction to Greenwald? (And yes, for those too lazy to read closely, I have repeatedly said that Greenwald was both the instigator and in the wrong in this ridiculous fracas.)
But: Respect is earned, and ABL ain’t earned none. I’m sure you disagree and that’s fine.
But if you wanna go down that road, YAFB, ABL can apologize to every poster she disrespected by acting inna pissy non-substantive schizophrenic poor-me/fuck-you bad-faith form of argumentation.
Ain’t it sorta strange you ain’t insisting on that, YAFB?
DaBomb
@FeFiFo: Do not tell me what is racial dogwhistling and what isn’t.
I am sick of white liberals telling black folks what isn’t racist and what is. I am not speaking about Obama’s record on civil liberties issues. Americans civil liberties have been infringed upon forever, ask the Native Americans.
I am talking about general criticism across the board on the internets. There is plenty of floating around. It’s not constructive. AT. ALL.
Just like I am sick of people trying to co-opt the Civil Rights movement by making abysmal comparisons between MLK, Rosa Parks and PBO, without taking into account how different the eras these people presided in are.
YAFB
@David Richey:
Well, my assumption (for which I was prepared to be disabused, but you did not disappoint) was that you would lack the basic manners and good grace and humility to admit that abusive comments like
were unwarranted in the face of the evidence, so I guess we’re quits. But no, you choose to remain an asshole determined to exercise your right to prove your assholishness over and over. Your “apology” above consequently has the same weight as Greenwald’s “rescinding.” And I believe you can whistle for your apology from ABL given the shit you and others have heaped on her over the course of this thread, you classless boor.
Me? I’m with kay above, whose comment should not be glossed over by any Greenwald fanboy distraction techniques.
chopper
@David Richey:
you’re a buffoon.
SGEW
I can’t believe I just read through this whole thread. Crikey.
David Richey
A fatuous bloke appears outta the ether w/the handle “chopper” and condescends to inform me I is a buffoon.
Irony is well ‘n truly dead.
Nice try!
Thanks for playing, chopper.
David Richey
“Quits”, are we, YAFB? Why, dear heart, I had no ideer we was even on, much less that we could reach such a perilous impasse so quickly. My head’s a-spinnin’!
(My anti-fans are so charmingly dramatic!)
So, I’m “abusive” b/c I’ve described the transparent behavior of a self-described “asshole”. Good to know.
I must confess: Yer lecture on the absence of my “basic manners” is a hoot!
I find it inneresting that you find it unnecessary to lecture ABL, or any of her fawning dilletantes, on the importance of “basic manners”.
Which suggests a truism of folks that ain’t terribly honest re: their friends and those w/whom they sympathize:
Such a person tends to argue their bias and is rather disinterested if not insulted by irritating facts that don’t conform w/their already established biases.
I eagerly await yer lecture to ABL on basic manners, YAFB, but somehow I expect it’s gonna take on like Linus waitin’ for the Great Pumpkin.
Allan
@David Richey: I’m racking my brain, trying to place your faux-folksy reasonable-guy act. The voice is oddly familiar, yet the name is new, and you seem to have a particular beef with BJers who are also Rumproasters. MyIQ1/2U? well, you haven’t fluffed Sarah Palin yet… Bob Somerby? nope, nothing about Rachel Maddow here… someone help me out. Who is this guy?
matoko_chan
i love you too, ABL. you and GG and Taibbi are prolly my all time favorite liberal commenters.
the only thing better for me than you calling out GG would be if you, GG and Taibbi fought each other with light sabers in the circus of swords in the Mongoliad.
never change.
YAFB
@Allan:
Nah, Allan. Even myiq2xu knows when he’s beat around here (usually after a sentence involving the word “goats”), and withdraws rapidly to troll another day. Plus the cod-folksy “inneresting” etc. schtick is something even the Parlous One doesn’t descend to.
I’m content that this “David Richey” has finally revealed himself for what he is–a bullying little inconsequential troll who’s only happy joining in a pile-on of unequal odds and has nothing substantive to say. The rest would be gravy, but we’re between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and gravy without meat is poor fare.
matoko_chan
Cole WAS one of my favorites until he approvingly linked Douthat.
some sins can nevah be forgiven.
>:(
chopper
@David Richey:
i’ve been here a long, long time. i’ve seen many a buffoon come and go, and let me tell you with great authority, yes. you are a buffoon.
if i were you, i’d personally apologize to ABL for the garbage about ‘being censored’. but then again i have some basic scruples and am not a complete buffoon.
but please, keep digging.
Mnemosyne
@David Richey:
If — and this is a big “if” — ABL owed an apology to anyone at all, it would be Greenwald, not you. I realize that you feel you’re his official surrogate and therefore an apology to you would be the same thing as an apology to him but, um, no.
And insisting that you don’t have to apologize for making false accusations because the person you falsely accused got angry at you for making the false accusations is assholery of the highest order.
Mnemosyne
C’mon, people, I know we can get this thread over 600 if we just try harder! Where’s mclaren when you need her?
matoko_chan
@Mnemosyne: wallah ….mclaren is a grrl?
Angry Black Lady
@David Richey: show me where i was petulant and whiny? i was stating my points rather clearly, i think. and explaining why i was ignoring certain people.
you accuse me of bad faith argument when you’ve got at least 4 personal attacks in your opening salvo to me? pfft.
you’re another person who has hit all the derailing goodies. i’m hysterical and overemotional right? schizophrenic? too angry? not responding the way you want me to respond (because hey you agree too!)? i never engage in substantive argument? have you read any of my other posts either here or on my blog? i would guess that you haven’t or you wouldn’t make such a patently untrue charge.
what makes you think you deserve “good faith” argument from me? you haven’t shown that you have. you’re not the center of my world and don’t warrant any further attention.
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
3, 5, and 6 are most applicable to you.
Angry Black Lady
i must have missed the emily post article where “basic manners” included accusing someone of being schizo, whiny, and petulant.
my oh my. what self-important pants we have on today.
sparky
@MBunge: thanks for a civil response.
i think there’s a fair amount of truth to your first point. i recall a rather lengthy dispute between Cole and Greenwald here over their respective interpretations of some fact that i can’t recall at the moment. and i agree with you that he does dig in sometimes and sticks with his interpretation no matter what. is that a good thing? no, not at all. is he also sometimes too quick to attribute a different opinion to the other opinion’s being held by an Obama supporter? probably.
and here i think we will have to agree to disagree. to me, those faults (and as i said above, there was nothing good to be said about that tweet) do not outweigh the good. here’s why:
1. he has continued to point out civil liberties abuses and the creeping authoritarianism of the US without regard to who is in power.
2. i know of no other blogger who is even half as dogged in digging out facts and exposing lies. people here seem to like Sullivan. what exactly, has Sullivan ever dug up on his own?
3. AFAIK he’s never made a serious mistake about the facts. has he made mistakes about his inferences from those facts? absolutely. does he make a lot of mistakes? not that i am aware. look, if he was always (or even frequently) wrong on the facts and the law, i certainly would not read him, no matter what i thought of his opinion.
4. aside from the seemingly obvious importance of much of his “beat”, with respect to civil rights and the Empire, those are issues that i find compelling and of the utmost importance. Greenwald covers areas of politics and power that are both fundamental and fundamentally ignored.
i have to expand on this last point because people don’t seem to care about it. IIRC it’s not too far removed from the opening of It Can’t Happen Here:
Greenwald has demonstrated, repeatedly, that Obama has not only continued Bush’s unconstitutional polices, but he has actually expanded them. thus, first, Obama is a war criminal if Bush is. of course an Obama supporter would recoil from that, or brush it off. but that would be a mistake, because if the people here truly believe in the US, they would be horrified by these acts.
second, Bush, and now Obama have, quite simply, asserted and acted as if they are above not just the law, but all law. not just a rule, or a regulation, or a treaty or a statute, but all law, everywhere. that you and i are not seized off the streets, tortured and held for life without judicial recourse is now not a matter of law, but whether someone working for Obama thinks you are an enemy of the Empire.
all of the other stuff people care about–healthcare, DADT, jobs, politics, is secondary to power. if you live in the US, you are living in a country where the Executive has asserted the power to have you disappeared. true, it hasn’t happened yet–so far as we know. but when as here, the Executive destroys the law, the only thing keeping it from happening is the forbearance of the authorities.
to my mind, this is far and away the most important domestic political issue. so you see, i hope, that in this context, i have a hard time being upset about Greenwald’s foibles. bash him all you want when he makes a mistake or does something [ ] like that tweet. call him out on his errors of reasoning. tell him to confine himself to giving opinions on the law and the Empire. but stop reading him? no.
as for point #2, i’m not being cute but i don’t understand your point.
Bella Q
@Mnemosyne: I’ll do my part…
Angry Black Lady
@DaBomb: i read on a blog the other day “all obama has left are minorities, teacher’s unions, and trial lawyers.”
we’re all he is has left. we’re *that* insignificant. a handful of commenters have even attempted to wrestle with that point. most others descended into madness.
it’s a sad state of affairs.
and with that, i’m off to go rescue a dog off death row in orange county.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@John Cole:
[raising hand] Except me, John! Except me! I’m a cool kid who said thing as you!
David Richey
Allan @577 sez:
_________________
Will save you some trouble, Allan.
David Richey: It’s my real name. Ain’t never posted here before.
RE: “MyIQ1/2U”: This bit o’ arcane esoterica I understand not. Having been roundly flogged for my ignorance of FYWP, I consulted Lord Google, who advised that the symbol appears to be some sorta Hillary flak/acolyte. That tain’t me.
Voted for Obama, I did. While realizing O. inherited a perfect shit-storm, I confess I’ve been disappointed (yer astonished, I’m sure) in his seeming inability and/or unwillingness to organize (oh, the bitter irony!) the Dem coalition behind a coherent set of policies/principles and then actually, you know, fight for them. The pre-sell-out to the insurance corps. and the death-by-faint-or-no-praise of the public option whereas especially bitter (ahem) poison pills to swaller. In fact, his passiveness in all fields except foreign policy, where I object strongly to his adventures in nonsensical militarism, are exasperating.
I don’t expect miracles, believe me, and, being an unapologetic liberal (or progressive or whatever the fuck you wanna call it these days), I’m regrettably used to not getting my way on things. But:
I’d sorta like to get the impression, at least sometimes, that Obama is willing use his immense intellect and charm and political talents to galvanize not just the (overgeneralizing, I know) jellyfish in his caucus but the (largely ig’nint) public at large. Bob Dole’s health care plan was, to me, purty weak tea, considerin’ his advantages upon taking office. Spunk ‘n courage is inspirin’. And contagious.
And if you don’t prevail, well, fuck, least you went down swingin’. And often you strike a better bargain when you start high ‘stead a pre-surrending. I often wonder if O. or any of his people ever bought a used car. Or played inna poker game. Or struck a bidness deal. (I know, I know, but I ain’t seen no evidence any of ’em has based on how they conducts negotiations.)
But yer mileage may vary.
And for all me, I didn’t want to sweep the Bush years under the rug, I wanted repudiation.
That, of course, didn’t happen. But you don’t sweep back decades-long Republican myths like “let the market decide!” and “tax cuts grow the economy!” and “privatize everything!” and “government is the problem, not the solution!” and “social security not Medicare is the real problem for Very Serious People!” w/o taking this sorta specious empty-calorie (transparent bullshit) Republican cant head-on.
Didn’t happen. And who better to do it than Obama? Make the affirmative case for progressive ideals. OK, so you ain’t got be as strident as I’d like, but when you let shit like Nixon get pardoned w/o penalty and Reagan to sell arms to terrorists w/o penalty and Bush to deliberately mislead a country into a stupid, selfish unnecessary war of aggression w/o penalty (and Cheney to shoot his fucking lawyer in the face and then — fucking then! — have the company-man actually apologize for getting his face in the way of Cheney’s gun), well, you are essentially saying: “Nothing to see here. Hide our shame and move on.” — man, if you allow that to stand w/o namin’, blamin’ and shamin’, you just enable it. It’s like a fuckin’ herpes sore on the body politic and, in Faulkner’s old dictum: “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”
And who better than Obama? But for some goddamn reason, Obama preferred to play bipartisan footsies and across-the-aisle patty-cake with transparent charlatans and liars and assholes who made it known — fucking known — early on, loudly and clearly, that their guiding-fucking-principle was sabotaging every policy that might accrue to his benefit so that Obama might be a one-term president.
Stay classy, GOP! I oft, in my whimsical moments, like to consider alternate scenarios. I.e. How, e.g., had Feingold said something similar to the GOP’s open political sabotage during Bush’s initial tenure, the howler monkeys would breathlessly republish mass quantities of “None Dare Call It Treason”.
Or how, if Gore had been president on 9/11, if — if — he wasn’t impeached, Gore would have been hounded relentlessly by the furies of talk radio and the establishment press (who hated him) and every mother-fucking-day Limbaugh and his wanna-bes would have started their shows w/”Day XXX that so-called President Gore has failed to capture or kill Osama bin-Laden”.
Ah, IOKIYAR. Never mind, just whinging.
Ah, well. It is what it is.
Anyway, you mighta seen me, Allan, eons ago (i.e. about four years ago) for a brief spell at Firedoglake. Can’t speak to the conjectured beef w/Rumproasters, Allan; can only assume if you disagree w/one bird, yer prolly gonna disagree w/birds-of-a-feather. Seems reasonable.
Tho’ I must confess I find it endlessly amusing that a fellow who lists only his first name is presently racking his brain trying to figger out who I is. I is me — who is you? (Ah, but I s’pose you can’t assume that my nick is my real name.)
So, no, you ain’t gonna see no fluffing of Sarah
The Mistake by the LakePalin. I commercial fish in Alaska. There is no bigger uninformed nitwit in ‘Murican politics. Olbermann’s quip about the “half-term governor” perfectly encapsulates the thin-skinned quitter who cashed in. She’s a pale mean-spirited imitation of the smiling-shiv-sticking Reagan affability, but she represents, imo, the consummate Republican ethos today: The GOP don’t give a shit if something works or not, whether it’s beneficial or not, whether it makes sense or not, just so long as it pisses off liberals, their guiding principle.Apart from that: Loves me some Olbermann. Maddow. Krugman. Grayson.
So that’s me.
(Which is prolly more’n you cared to know, but there it is anyway. Tain’t got nothin’ important to hide.)
scot
I found BWD to be a ray of sunshine in a morass of negativity. Greenwald needs to take a restful holiday.
FeFiFo
@DaBomb: Fair enough, but the Hitler meme was used on Bush plenty of times. Its not a racially-based insult. The insult might be levied against someone because of racial motivations, and I’ll certainly give you that in Obama’s case there’s plenty of people calling him Hitler because they’re upset that a Black man is President, but its not the same thing as the Kenyan witch doctor images.
matoko_chan
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): cudlips are never cool.
FeFiFo
@Angry Black Lady: For as much as I sympathize with your pain over the first Black president losing support, there are cases where support isn’t warranted. Blindly supporting him through his many civil liberties violations isn’t what a civil libertarian is going to do, and GG is a civil libertarian who was exactly as harsh on Bush as he’s being on Obama.
If anything I think its upsetting that Obama’s racial heritage and his legitimate triumph over America’s racist history is being used as a shield to deflect from the fact that he’s as much of a corporate shill and police state supporter as any white man that held the job before him.
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
She claimed to be a woman at one point, and has never corrected me when I used feminine pronouns to refer to her. I think it amuses her to have people assume otherwise.
licensed to kill time
:::look of dismay::: I have to read ALL the comments?
(was hoping to be #600 but I have premature submission)
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
No, you’re a liar who has no credibility and lacks the integrity to own up to their lie when called on it.
David Richey
chopper @ 580 sez:
____________________
Hell, don’t sell yerself short, chopper. I just bet, put yer mind to it, yer a perfect buffoon. Why, I’d wager yer an authority onnit. You just said so!
Find it endlessly amusing how peeps are quick to grant themselves qualities (“basic scruples”) they ain’t earned. (“It’s good to be the king!”) Tho’ it must be said: Pulling it off while grandstanding w/moral rectitude is just plain showin’ off.
That, and it’s also funny how you equate seniority w/actually knowing something.
And last: Delighted you ain’t me, chopper, b/c yer suggested course of action is one that the object of pity don’t deign to entertain her own self. And it’d be a drag to be that big a nudge. Also. Too.
Marc
Greenwald seems to have a substantial cadre of defenders utterly blind to his faults. He’s intellectually dishonest – I can’t trust him to accurately characterize the opinions or positions of his opponents. He’s an arrogant bully who smears anyone that disagrees with him. And he has absolutely no sense of proportion or political judgment.
In summary, he’s worthy only of contempt and deserves the fate he dreads most: to be ignored.
sparky
@Allan: thanks for the clarification. i misunderstood.
i don’t think being on a team precludes me from saying that the in my opinion the Constitution and the norms it embodies are more important than any team.
you are of course, at least at the moment, free to disagree with me.
relatedly, and sincerely, i encourage all the people who dislike Greenwald to stop reading him.
instead, take a moment to think about what it means that the Executive is above the law.
everything seems to go along as usual, until one day it doesn’t. then it’s too late.
Mnemosyne
@FeFiFo:
In other words, GG is so desperate to find something, anything to back up his claims that Obama is just like Bush that he has to troll around looking for Obama fansites instead of posting about illegal occupations and torture by the Obama administration?
Clearly the man has too much time on his hands if he actually thinks this silly fansite was something he needed to point out and comment on so he could compare it to Nazi propaganda and sneak in a snarky Obama = Hitler comparison.
Hmm, almost like he doesn’t have quite as much to rant about as he did during the Bush years, isn’t it? Nah, that couldn’t be it, because Obama = Bush = Hitler, amirite?
licensed to kill time
Tryin’ again….oh six hundred?
{{{curses! foiled by Mnemosyne!}}}
Mnemosyne
Whoo- hoo! 600! My work is done here, so I’m going to lunch.
;-)
Ryan
No, he really did not compare Obama to Hitler. Not even a little bit. He compared some photos on a blog to Triumph of the Will; and if you look at the photos, then go watch Triumph of the Will, the comparison fits. Is it anywhere near the jingoistic idiocy of the whole “Mission Accomplished” fiasco? No, but it’s ballpark.
But of course, anything Third Reich associated that gets brought up in any context automatically infers in small minds a direct link to Hitler/Holocaust. This is why you should always use Chile or Spain and never Germany for any and all Fascism analogies.
This is kind of a dumb post.
FeFiFo
@Mnemosyne: Actually there’s plenty out there if anyone cares to look for it. GG does; apparently commentators here, not so much.
http://whatinthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com. Take your time, read through the cited articles. Support of child soldiers, shipping detainees to black ops sites to be tortured, there’s plenty there. Educate yourself.
He has plenty to rant about, and does. You’re making a tortured point (pardon the pun) that because he made a tweet about a blogger doing the exact same blind hero worship crap that everyone on the left gagged over when Bush was on the pedestal, Obama must simply be better than Bush.
“Better” is a relative comparison. Obama has taken Bush’s policies and expanded them. I don’t call that better.
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: it is slaying me that you’re still talking. could you remind me what i lied about again? something about you thinking i said that glenn greenwald thinks obama is hitler? and then, if i recall, you gave me a chance to admit what i did (still unclear as to the details of that one), and now you’re frothing at the mouth about my integrity. you keep hurling these insults but i’m not sure what effect you think your increased agitation is having. i know you’ve probably already called me a bitch as you angrily type out your posts. what else have you called me? like you said, it’s only the internet, right? so settle down. go outside. have a two martini lunch.
you don’t know me. i don’t know you. i don’t care if you think i’m a liar. i don’t care if you think i don’t have any integrity. i don’t care if you burn me in effigy. start a tumblr, if you like: “ABLISALIARANDHASNOINTEGRITY.COM” that one’s on me.
you’re just making a fool out of yourself. really. it’s time to let it go.
now ain’t this some racist bullshit. my god. you have gone truly mental.
i don’t know why i keep reading this thread. it’s like a trainwreck. i want to look away, but i can’t. every comment is crazier than the last.
i wish i could quit you, thread.
now i really do gotta go see a man about a dog.
~ABL OUT.
FeFiFo
@Angry Black Lady: I’m sorry my comment upset you so much, but maybe you’d like to clarify why you feel my comment is “racist bullshit” instead of shitting and running. I’ve been nothing but respectful. The fact remains Obama has been just as horrible on civil liberties as Bush ever was, regardless of the skin tone of either of them.
Also, would your response change if you knew I wasn’t white?
chopper
@David Richey:
can i buy pot from you?
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
re mccrackerjack being female:
To quote Louis Black back in 2006 during a dust-up about whether former VA
buffoonsenator George Allen was half-Jewish: “We’re not claiming him.”Martin
Holy hell, you guys are still at this? Anyone else get called a Nazi, or just me?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Ryan: So, in your mind, an independent blog that reposts pictures taken by the White House or by news services is comparable to the Nazi’s most significant propagandist, who was directly funded by the Nazis to create innovative new propaganda techniques. Is that about the size of it?
Good lord, people. I’m all about criticizing Obama. Fire away. He needs it.
But if you think pointing out that he has a cult of personality, same as every single halfway famous person who ever lived, much less the first black American President, is somehow a valid and cutting criticism, rather than the most banal observation you could possibly make, you are an idiot.
Would I prefer to live in a world where people aren’t influenced by such petty emotions, and we chose our leaders and policy based solely on merit and reason? You’re damn right I would. I’d also like a spinning wheel that makes gold from straw, but I’m not going to base my life’s philosophy on the unlimited piles of gold I outta have.
Leftists who think they’re somehow helping the cause by shooting down those they find too exuberant are just fucking morons. Leftists who think a blog that aggregates photos is just like Leni Riefenstahl are delusional morons.
jwb
@Martin: I’ve heard you can’t kill nazi zombie trolls.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@FeFiFo: Funny, I don’t recall getting too worked up over websites that collected pictures of Bush and linked to news stories positive to him back during his reign. I was slightly more concerned with actual lying propagandists, like the ones who’d appear on cable news 24 hours a day. But Bush fansites? Nope, not even a minor concern of mine.
If I ever did flip out because some small-time blogger with absolutely no influence did anything so bland, I’d fucking hope somebody was around to slap me back down to reality. Luckily for me, I guess, that was never needed.
Mnemosyne
@FeFiFo:
I really don’t have time to sit and scroll through every single screen until I randomly happen across one that you’re talking about, and there doesn’t appear to be any way to actually go to a particular cite.
But, hey, it’s an easy way to avoid answering people’s questions when you tell them to go to a site that takes them down a rabbit hole and doesn’t allow searches. Good job there.
chopper
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
if i wrote 10,000-word screeds because somebody had the audacity to disagree with me, i’d have to wonder why i have so much fuckin’ free time.
FeFiFo
@Angry Black Lady: Actually, I’ll take the chance to explain where I’m coming from since you’re probably the only one reading this far into the comments anyway.
Your statement, that I responded to directly, was “i read on a blog the other day “all obama has left are minorities, teacher’s unions, and trial lawyers.”
we’re all he is has left. we’re that insignificant.” Unless you’re also a trial lawyer or belong to a teacher’s union, well, there’s one category that “we” belong to in that sentence.
Support Obama for whatever reasons you want to. The civil liberties stuff doesn’t matter that much to you apparently, or else you wouldn’t have already been at the end of your rope with Greenwald “bashing” Obama. But you’re the one that framed the situation as a few groups remaining that still support Obama, and minorities was one of them, with the inference that everyone else abandoned him without reason. If you want to lay out 1+ 2 in a statement, don’t get pissed when someone adds it up to 3.
I work with anti-fascist groups that monitor hate speech. I spend all goddamn day reading racist bullshit by racists who swear up and down they aren’t racists, so me claiming I’m not racist to you isn’t going to do much, I’m sure. But I do have to say its a unique and refreshing change from being called a socialist communist n-bomb lover.
FeFiFo
@Mnemosyne: I’d be happy to cite them for you, but the two posts earlier where I did are still caught in the moderation filter three hours later. Rock and a hard place. Sorry to ask you to click three times before you found an applicable cite, since about 75% of the points on there are civil liberty related.
Mnemosyne
@FeFiFo:
Some of us have jobs and can only do these things on their lunch breaks. Which is now over, so I have to go.
ETA: I was able to see the link that said that Obama returned the rendition policy to the same one that Clinton had, which obviously makes him OMG WORSE THAN BUSH! ! 1 !
FeFiFo
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: Kinda funny that we’re 600+ comments deep discussing a blogger smacking an author for smacking a blogger then, huh? The 5 minutes Greenwald spent tweeting about this I’m sure could have been put to better use, but let’s not pretend that’s the extent of what he does.
FeFiFo
@Mnemosyne: I hope they pay you well at your job for dkos-level snark in lieu of having a substantial point and the ability to back it up with facts.
Ryan
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
In my mind, blind military worship is blind military worship. It leads to unnecessary wars and hardship, and should stop. Was it dumb and unnecessary to invoke the Third Reich? I believe I answered that question in the affirmative.
YAFB
@Mnemosyne:
Since you have time rationing, like most of us IRL, I’ll save you the bother for now.
Like most of the claims on that site (“backed up” by a variety of MSM stories, some of which even include rebuttals of the points supposedly being made below the ledes), the “support of child soldiers” headline ignores the commitment to engagement with a view to actively phasing out the use of child soldiers stated in at least two administration quotes in the article itself. But that doesn’t fit the paradigm which would prefer the purity on non-engagement that would leave the status quo in place and benefit no child soldiers at all, so you have to dig, even within the paltry sourcing on offer.
FeFiFo
@YAFB: Yes, let’s go through the links and actually cite what they say.
From Foreign Policy’s article:
“On Monday, the Obama administration waived sections of a law meant to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers in Africa, paving the way for new military cooperation with four countries with poor human rights records — despite their use of underage troops.
“I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the [Child Service Prevention Act],” President Obama wrote in a memorandum to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the law, which prohibits U.S. military education and training, foreign military financing, and other defense-related assistance to countries that actively recruit troops under the age of 18. Countries are designated as violators if the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report identifies them as recruiting child soldiers.
The original bill was actually sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) before being added to a larger bill led by then Senator, now Vice President Joseph Biden. The only countries where the restrictions under this law are still in place are now Burma and Somalia.
The only reason provided in the memorandum was that Obama determined it was in the “national interest” to waive the law for those four countries.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told The Cable that the Obama administration has decided that working with militaries that recruit child soldiers actually helps solve the problem more than ignoring those militaries would.
“In each of these countries, we are working with the governments to stop the recruitment of child soldiers or demobilize those who may already be in the ranks,” Crowley explained. “These countries have put the right policies in place, but are struggling to effectively implement them. These waivers allow the United States to continue to conduct valuable training programs and by working with these militaries help them meet international norms.”
So the Obama administration has determined that deepening military relationships with brutal dictatorships and unsavory regimes is the best way to reform them? That seems like a pretty big shift in policy. It still remains unclear what military assistance the United States actually plans to give to countries like Sudan, Chad, and Yemen, as well as how it will use its engagement to protect child soldiers.
“We will continue to work with these governments to reduce the recruitment or use of child soldiers within the ranks of their armed forces,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mailed statement. “We will also generally endeavor to prevent foreign security forces that recruit and use child soldiers from benefitting from any U.S. foreign assistance.””
And here’s the approval of extradition to black ops sites from the NY Times link, and before anyone gets pissed that I didn’t link it I’ll remind you again that the two posts that I did provide direct links on are still in the moderation queue from hours ago:
The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.
Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.”
I’ll also add, for being a supposedly progressive site that just hates all the disdain that the Republicans have for the unemployed, you both sure are quick to snark about the assumed employment status of someone you disagree with.
Suck It Up!
Can I haz the last word?
YAFB
@FeFiFo:
That all proves nothing except my point.
The key quote, rather than the opinionating of the reporter, is here–as I pointed out, buried well below the lede:
I’m absolutely not prepared to waste all night doing this point by point as your mind is already made up and I doubt will be changed. The site is at best superficial, at worst deliberately misleading. Others can read it in whatever depth they want and make their own minds up.
FeFiFo
@YAFB: So your entire point was that the Administration had a different preferred spin? Man, did you buy any of the transparent b.s. out of the Bush Administration as well, or is it only when Team Blue feeds it to you?
YAFB
No, and I’d appreciate it if you quit putting words in my mouth as I don’t consider that a valid or worthwhile debating tactic.
Note I didn’t choose to try to insult you and go ad hominem, unlike yourself. Like I said:
“I’m absolutely not prepared to waste all night doing this point by point as your mind is already made up and I doubt will be changed.”
Bye. Enjoy the rest of the thread.
FeFiFo
@YAFB: OK, then let’s go back to how you’ve reviewed every link on that site along with the cited articles and found them all lacking in validity and substance. You go first.
YAFB
What part of “I’m absolutely not prepared to waste all night doing this point by point as your mind is already made up and I doubt will be changed” are you incapable of understanding?
Ruckus
@Martin:
Who can keep track?
I wonder how long it would have taken for the Korean or Vietnam war peace talks if any of our ‘friends’ here had been participating? And how far would the wars have escalated out of desperation to make it go away in the mean time?
chopper
@FeFiFo:
LOL. ‘here’s a whole website full of links, once you’ve slogged through and disproven every one get back to me’. you’re funny.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@FeFiFo: Understand, I was once a staunch Glenn Greenwald defender. I’ve been flamed for it many a time right on this site. However, this five-minute tweet he made seriously calls into question the man’s ability to accurately perceive reality, and that ability was his stock in trade.
I mean, to me it’s almost as though Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a link to a hollow-earth theory website while stating that it makes many good points. His credibility would be gone, and so is Greenwald’s. I wish that wasn’t so, but I won’t pretend otherwise.
@Ryan: BWD’s site isn’t devoted to blind military worship. Those are simply the most recently released photos of her true focus for blind worship: Barack Obama. She cooed even more over pics of the man playing basketball with his daughters.
If you have an issue with the photos, then your issue is with the AP. If you have an issue with blind military worship, your issue is with the American people in general, not the politician who’d be an idiot not to take advantage.
If your position is that Obama should disdain the military, well, okay then. My position is that Obama would be utterly stupid to do so. He’s the President of the United States, not Hippydippy Enlightenment Land.
firestarter
It occurs to me that sitting around, incessantly responding to one blog post (to the tune of over 600 comments, most by the same core group of people), is an example of privilege run amok. Yay for cushy jobs and computers and the interwebz! Let’s all drink our half-caf 3 shot vente sugar free hazelnut non-fat no foam lattes with three splendas and rejoice! While ya’ll were posting each of your eleventy responses to other responders, real shit happened in the world. Like, for reals real. In the grand scheme of things, getting into a 12(000) point argument with some bi-polar screaming douchenozzle on a blog is an example of privilege.
Congratulations on being intelligent (well, most of you), reasonably verbose, opinionated and some unholy form of tenacious/convinced-you-are-absolutely-right/pretentious/insufferable/whatever. Now, shut the fuck up already and go actually DO some good, instead of talking about whether somebody else has done good. I’m sure some of you actually do good things. Like donate money to nice charities, refrain from running over pedestrians and recycle. But for fuck’s sake, if you took a portion of the time you took to blog on this post and reallocated it to something more positive, it might be nice. For everyone. Even you.
I’m not saying I agree with any side, or that nobody is fighting the good fight, or that anybody is wrong, OR that anybody is right. I’m not even saying that there isn’t a place for polite discussion or debate, or even flamethrowing shitstorms of arguments…I’m just saying that it’s time to move on.
soonergrunt
Come on, everybody! Let’s push to 700!
YAFB
I just noticed this little dig from FeFiFo, so I’m back to address it from my own point of view, then outta here to munch popcorn or flick peanuts or whatever.
Where the fucking hell did I do that?
Personally, I’m self-employed. I can afford a certain amount of time and attention during a working day to spend/fritter away online without screwing myself or my clients. Beyond those limits, until and unless we build that robot-run leisure-for-all Utopia that I read about in comic books when I was a kid, it has to be rationed. Later in the day, usually being a bit bushed and punchy, I tend to try to be selective about what pointless endless flame wars I get involved in (and yes, that usually works out really well, thanks for asking). That’s RL.
I have no idea of, and even less interest in, your employment status. It’s not all about you, savvy?
jwb
@soonergrunt: I’m in.
jwb
@soonergrunt: I stopped reading last night around 350. Anything interesting happened in the meantime?
worn
@David Richey: 5fuckin80something comments & Lord I know better and yet here I go…
David: It certainly seems quite simple. You came here. ABL did not show up on your site. You then made – notwithstanding your subsequent weak, Humpty-Dumpty style mea culpa about the commentariat misconstruing your simple declarative sentences – baseless insuations against ABL, accusing her of deleting your posts with absolutely no knowledge of the way this site operates or the continuing FYWP woes. Hell, I comment very little & know about this. You then lash out at other long-time commenters like chopper. And then, to top it all off, you want to be taken seriously. Uh, yeah, hoss…
Let me put it this way: you don’t go to someone’s house, take a shit in the punchbowl and then demand an apology about something that you saw inside the house that upsets you. This ain’t “your house”; rather, you took advantage of an open invite to the party in order to immediately crawl up on the table and drop trou.
This joint is John Cole’s and he’s given the front door keys to ABL (yay JC!), I would surmise because she writes with passion and snark. I personally enjoy this style. You do not. That, too, is fine.
But, word up, hoss, she just don’t owe you jack shit.
worn
@worn:
60 in the time in took me to get my longwinded crap pounded out. Sweet mother of something
Suffern ACE
I’m a bit behind. Did anyone win?
soonergrunt
@jwb: Not really. More of the same craziness and angst, just with a few different people as the night crowd came in and had a collective “WTF?!?” moment.
freelancer
I didn’t bother to read any of the comments in this thread, but this shit is leaking into other areas. (Including the football thread last night).
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
It has come to my attention that this thread has run a bit amok.
Not that I don’t like the occasional thing-that-has-run-amok, BUT, without reading much beyond the very top and very bottom of comments (because good lord, who has time for 630+ fucking comments?) I am going to leap in and say this:
Whatever the hell is wrong with Glenn Greenwald — a very smart man who often has very smart ideas and is able to express those ideas surpassingly well but who every now and then goes way the hell off the fucking deep end and fails to pull himself back onto dry land — appears to be wrong with a bunch of people here.
What the fuck is wrong with those of you who have Glenn Greenwald’s malady?
Here’s the gist of ABL’s as-usual-excellent post:
People in positions of power shouldn’t go out of their way to pick on people who are not in positions of power, and whatever they do, they should choose their words with greater care than Greenwald did here and, in fact, often does. This is what I believe might be the very dictionary definition of “common sense.”
There. Now you can all go get some damn milk and cookies and calm the fuck down.
Allan
@jwb: No, from there you’ll want to skip about a hundred more of the same post over and over again by WyldStallion. However, at around 470 a @new character is introduced who proceeds helpfully to recap the conversation for everyone as a slam on ABL. Then, when he begins to experience FYWP moderation and “missing” comments, complains loudly and boisterously about the abusive moderating practices of ABL in a strangely twee voice (lots of “inna” and “bloke” “yer” for your, etc.).
It’s moderately entertaining, if you don’t mind losing the requisite one IQ point per post you read.
freelancer
@soonergrunt:
But did any memes come about from it? We need to be aware.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@worn: Or, you know, what worn said. (Cause it was awesome).
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@firestarter: So sorry that I’m using my breaks from studying for finals to have a fucking conversation. If I was as good a person as you, I’d have spent those 10-20 minutes periods volunteering at the homeless shelter.
Also, sneering about lattes doesn’t make you sound like Sean Hannity. Not a bit.
jwb
@Allan: My goodness. Around and around and around it goes.
soonergrunt
@freelancer: I’m sure there are, but self preservation dictates that one only read this thread 20 posts at a time. It could take weeks.
worn
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Right back atcha, hon!
arguingwithsignposts
Is this the longest comment thread on BJ? I’m sure it’s got to be in amongst the top somewhere by now.
Allan
@freelancer:
Ctrl + F tells me that the word “creepy” was invoked 18 times so far to describe BWD’s website, almost entirely by or in response to WyldStallion. (My earlier allegation that the count was in the 70s was off by a few Friedman Units.)
So that’s one.
soonergrunt
@arguingwithsignposts: The top one is over 700, but I can’t remember what it was about. John finally shut it off, IMS.
Omnes Omnibus
What is the matter with you people? I assumed this thing was dead and buried. Let it die, just let it die. Can’t you see it is suffering? Put the thread out of its misery; it would be the kindest thing you could do.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: But why would we want to be kind to it? {kicks the thread in the head}
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: I shall back slowly away, holding up my hands to show that I mean no harm.
PanAmerican
WILLARD: Here, take the radio. If I don’t get back by 2200 hours,
you call in the airstrike.”
CHEF: “Airstrike?!?”
WILLARD: “The code is Almighty, coordinates 090264712.. It’s
all in here.”
.
.
.
.
CHEF: “Almost eight hours… I sleep and I dream I’m in this
shitty boat….. fuck! Has it been eight hours?”
CHEF: “Hello Almighty, Almighty, this is PBR Street Gang –
radio check, over.”
RADIO: “Street Gang, this is Almighty, standing by, over.”
Maody
I’m just here to make a non comment on teh longest thread i’ve ever seen in my year of visiting BJ. hey everybody! here’s some wet kittehs for you
soonergrunt
Kurtz: I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.
pattonbt
Man. Epic.
I’ll take my usual pot shot at Pirate Dude by taking a shot at GG (who I like and don’t like, just like Obama and many others). I asked Pirate Dude the other day “why invoke ‘Black’ Jesus when just Jesus or Obot whatever is more than sufficient?” Crickets. There were the attempts to say “oh its just snark” and some such bullshit, but he couldn’t defend it and moved on. I didn’t call him a racist and have not and will not, but it still made no sense and he knew deep down he got caught being fucking stupid but couldn’t admit it.
He wondered why such a small thing like that would make so many people disregard him out of hand. I guess if you can’t see through that, you can’t see through why GG did himself a disservice this time around (this is not meant as pro or con ABL). When you go too far over the top to prove a point it muddies the message and you end up being counter productive to your goals. And I like GG’s goals.
GG picked a random small time blogger and compared her (him?) to one the highest and most well know state sponsored propagandist’s ever in the history of the world. Also a propagandist who just happened to be Hitler’s propagandist. I mean the cases are about as far removed from each other as possible. I mean why even go there? And the rationality one would have to disregard to see the comparison as apt or appropriate is mind boggling. Really, mind boggling. How can someone as obviously intelligent as GG be that idiotic. And how could his supporters not see it?
Small time one person fan blog versus most evil state sponsored propagandist to ever live whose propaganda supported the murder of millions of people. Christ on a stick some people are dense.
I like GG, especially when he is on his A topic – civil liberties. But when he strays he proves he’s pretty moronic. He has no functioning sense of nuance or politics and at times I wonder how smart he may be. Its black and white. Yet there is a place in this world for people like GG, a very, very valuable place. His work in the Bush and continuing now in the Obama years on civil liberties is fantastic. Maybe with some practice he could branch out from civil liberties, but his attempts so far have been pretty weak. And in this case borderline unforgivable. And all it does is tarnish his good work.
Again, why bring in Leni? Unless it is to invoke Nazi-ism. Seriously, why? There is no other reason. I’m sure he thought when he posted it “I am sure no one will think I am making a Nazi comparison even though I am bringing up the Nazi’s primary propagandist who’s only known as a Nazi propagandist and invokes primal hatred at the mention of her name. Nope, I;m sure no one will make that comparison because that is not the comparison I am trying to make”. Idiot.
And why would GG even bother with this nobody blogger. I had never heard of them before in my life. He wanted to take a shot at Obama and found some weaksauce to try and finagle a “dear leader” point. Yet all he did was show himself to be a bit petty, clumsy and seriously off key.
I mean I wouldn’t even say Fox is comparable to Leni (yet) and they are about as bad as it gets for “mainstream”.
Leland
ABL, you are peddling complete bullshit, and you are most unwise ignore Glenn Greenwald’s comparison (which was not, as you shamefully assert, between Obama & Hitler, but between swooning fangirls of the 20th and 21st centuries).
Grennwald was QUITE ACCURATE in identifying the tendency to worship the charismatic leader, which was exploited throughout the past century—yes, by the worst regime of them all, among others.
If Blackwaterdog is truly taken aback by this, that’s all to the good. She has been a foolish propagandist and anything that might prompt her to reassess her Big Brother hero worship could do her good.
Sorry your tin god is being attacked. But the solution isn’t to attack back—you don’t have a leg to stand on & will only lose—the solution is to quit worshipping the damn tin god.
matoko_chan
wallah this thread is EPIC.
in the past ~24 hours since people started commenting on this thread (start: December 5th, 2010 at 7:55 pm) Wikileaks has acquired 480 new servers for its distributed server cloud and 26 more diplomatic cables have been released.
This PSA has been brought to you by the Society for Information Transparency or possibly by the Society for Creative Anarchy.
can we shoot for a thousand?
is there anything i can do to halp?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@matoko_chan: You can try to get GG to comment here. Otherwise, the black maw that is falling from the front page awaits.
soonergrunt
34 to go! Come on, we can do it!
WyldPirate
@Angry Black Lady:
Unbelievable. You can’t even be bothered to read what you wrote in your own, original, post.
In addition to being a liar with no personal integrity, apparently the options that should be considered now include the fact that you are either ADD, dense, ignorant or stupid. Another one is that you were mistaken and are too obstinate and prideful to acknowledge an error. Those seem to be the only choices left.
Now I’ve asked you several times to reconsider what you said, but you seem to refuse to even acknowledge what you wrote originally even when it has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions. On top of that, you then came out slinging insults out of the gate in response.
No matter, I’ll try one more time to gather all of this together to show you–yet again–what you, in fact, wrote and where you reasoning and logic falls apart.
Hang on, too, because this is going to be a long one cause I have to go back and document this for your ADD/dense/stupid/ignorant lying and lacking-integrity self.
Your original lie is in the second paragraph of your original post following the list of GG tweets YOU posted when you made a mountain out of this mole hill. Here is your original lie—the one I pointed out and blockquoted— in numerous posts in this thread in response to the same question you seem unable to get through your head.
The lie is highlighted. I first pointed it out to you in post #61 and then in posts #173 and #376. The lie, in case you can understand, is Greenwald NEVER compared Obama to Hitler. You did. You simply also seem to be incapable of interpreting the analogy that Greenwald made. I also need to point out the irony in YOU demanding that the “right thing to do is apologize and admit your mistake”.
Here is what Greenwald said in the original Twitter you posted:
The analogy Greenwald made was this (which I pointed out at posts #223, #331 and #435–along with your interpretive error- in this thread):
This analogy is not a statement of equivalence between Obama and Hitler. This is the “red herring; logical fallacy you tossed out at post #350 and #394 that ticked me off at post #435. The analogy is comparing a propagandizing visual artist (Riefenstahl) of one “leader”–Hitler– to another “propagandizing” visual artist (BWD) of another leader– Obama. This is a distinctly different interpretation than the one that you made and caused you to charge Greenwald with comparing Obama to Hitler in your post.
You made that charge because you obviously have a case of the ass against him for criticizing Obama (which prompted my post at #4 mocking you in the first place). You clearly agree that Obama gets unjust criticism because it is evident on your posts here and on your blog and from your sympathies towards BWD’s blog and her reason for blogging as she does. So there goes your claim that you aren’t petulant and whiny.
I really never cared that you were pissed at Greenwald. What I was pissed at was your refusal to acknowledge that you falsely accused Greenwald of something that he didn’t do and that you wouldn’t acknowledge that you were wrong. After a point, mistakes are no longer mistakes and dishonesty is foretold by the denial of responsibility to acknowledge your mistake. On top of that, I was nice and only mildly snarking in number #4 and my earlier posts, but you came out at #20 and accused me of having no reading comprehension skills. I was even willing to let it go with a mere acknowledgement until you started tossing out the BS logical fallacies and pulling the harrumphing denials (#350, #394, #410, etc).
This is my last post on this matter. You can read it or not and acknowledge what you said and did or not. That’s up to you. I don’t imagine that many people really give a shit about it anymore, but you’re standing on a slippery slope. It’s pretty clear that I’m not the only one questioning your integrity at this point. It’s your’s to salvage or not. People are pretty forgiving here, but they don’t tolerate willfully dishonest people very well. I won’t be the only one after you if this sort of questionable personal integrity becomes an habitual writing trait in your posts.
arguingwithsignposts
Dammit, WP, you ruined the perfect comment number to end this thread on!
gogol's wife
@arguingwithsignposts:
Soonergrunt got it.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@soonergrunt: So what you’re saying is that you’re the antichrist. I see.
Angry Black Lady
@FeFiFo: I may have rushed to judgment and for that, I apologize. This is one crazy ass thread and admittedly, I read your first sentence and rolled my eyes. I will read your comments.
This thread has been something else. Hoo boy!
Paula
@pattonbt:
Obot!! Obot!!
matoko_chan
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: he says hes too bizzy with important stuff like Wikileaks.
Glinda
Great to get a UID here. Many old friends, I see.
This was a hilarious and colorful set of posts. I’m almost through them but like a good novel with vivid characters, I’m loathe to finish the read.
I will refrain from my usual editorializing/novelization of this thread as I’m new, but a more interesting set of characters, I am pleased to report, hasn’t been seen in a long time at GOS.
A shout out to ABL for a compelling read and for keeping her head in all of this … er … noise.
chopper
@WyldPirate:
i don’t think many here are saying glennzilla said obama was the equivalent to hitler. the analogy is, however a comparison of the two (as an analogy is), which is still fuckin’ loopy.
the really stupid thing about the analogy is that it tries to dumb it down just that much. riefenstahl was a big-time film maker, a friend of hitler and an organ of the nazi government. bwd is just a two-bit blogger on the internet who posts a lot of pictures. if you think that makes her a ‘visual artist’ comparable to riefenstahl, you’re a buffoon.
i know histrionic types are all about the stupid nazi comparison and glenn is no exception, but it’s still moronic.
Angry Black Lady
@firestarter: i just rescued a really adorable cocker spaniel who was going to be put down at 5 pm today. i don’t have him with me yet, i just drove down to the OC to pay for him and stay his execution. the shelter is going to cut off his junk (after touching it to make sure he’s not hiding a WMD in his balls) and then i’m going to pick him up, pay for his vet bills (he’s got kennel cough and cherry eye), fatten him up, play him some reruns of glee and try to find him a nice permanent home before christmas.
hopefully nate dogg won’t be too pissed at me for this.
so if you know of anyone in the LA area looking for an awesome 5 year old cocker spaniel/golden retriever mix, shoot me an email: [email protected]
Angry Black Lady
@WyldPirate: still at it, i see. you’re like a stray dog who has latched on to my leg and won’t let go.
i’ve already taken in one stray today. i don’t have room for any more. please detach yourself from my leg now.
Angry Black Lady
@FeFiFo: what i was reeacting to was the condescension:
that’s condescending, and it smacks of racism because of your phrasing: “the first Black president”– that sounded to me like you were saying my only reasons for supporting him are because he is black.
on to your next point: you make an assumption that i am blindly supporting him through his many civil liberties violations. do you not think it is possible to have a nuanced opinion of someone? i have never, either here or on my blog expressed blind support for him. again, that you would think i am doing so smacks of stereotyping, if not racism. (i’ll actually recant the “racist” charge since it’s more stereotyping than anything else.)
i read glenn all through the bush years, and maybe it’s because his audience was always liberal and therefore unified in its distaste for bush, i don’t recall this level of vitriol and assholish writing. i think that, at some point, he moved from criticism to bashing. i was with him (agreeing with him about obama and his civil liberties failures) and reading him regularly through the “criticism” phase. at a certain point, it became not constructive criticism, but bashing and temper tantrums. his tweet was evidence of that. do i think his tweet invalidates the good work he has done? no. do i still respect the work he has done? yes. have i lost respect for him? yes. he should know better. and frankly, i cannot fathom the lengths to which people will go to defend what was clearly a dick move. would my opinion of him change if he copped to a lapse in judgment and said he made a dick move? absolutely.
TO ALL:
my frustration from this thread stems from age old tactics aimed at shutting me up by calling me hysterical, having a hissy fit, too angry, stupid, ignorant, or what have you, for simply having a different opinion.
i may have been snarky towards people on this thread, but the disproportionate attacks on me and my character are flatly preposterous. certain commenters won’t be happy until i admit that my whole moral compass is off, but since i refuse to do so because i don’t disagree with their assessment of me, it’s further evidence of my skullduggery.
do not misunderstand me. i am not upset. i am not angry. i’m not hurt. it’s going to take a lot more than some random people in my computer calling me an asshole or a bitch, ignorant, undignified, a liar, [insert adjective] to rattle my sense of self. people are threatening to leave the blog. over me? seriously? how sad your life must be. if you’re trying to make me cry, you’re going to be on this thread until it reaches 1000. go outside and do something productive. i’m sure you have something better to do with your time.
i argue for a living and i try to do it without resorting to personal attacks. unfortunately, some people here don’t seem to be able to make a point without calling me names and whatnot, and then feigning concern for my “fee fees” or “butthurtiness”. i stated way upthread that i wouldn’t respond to such nonsense. my nonresponse is taken as proof that they are right. if you think you’re so right, why the hell do you need me to confirm it for you? just go about your day being right and awesome. good for you.
it’s really amusing to watch some of you try to rattle me and to watch you get more and more unhinged. and then when i respond, in what are fairly measured terms, i get called petulant and whiny.
what are you people trying to prove?
and by the way, i am jewish, i am black, i am a trial lawyer, and my (jewish) grandfather was fired from his job as a school teacher in the philly school district and booted out of the union because he refused to “name names” back in the 50s, so i feel i’m on pretty solid ground using the royal “we” and i know i’m on solid ground calling glenn’s ass out for this dick move.
and considering my utterly bizarre upbringing, i’ve dealt with assholes lobbing threats and insults and trying to tear me down for my entire life. i’ve built up a pretty thick skin as a result.
there are few people in this world whose opinions of me actually matter. i can guaranteed you name-hurlers are not among them; so continue to call me names if it makes you feel better. you’re just making yourselves look like jackasses. just keep pecking away at your keyboard. i hope you’re having fun doing it at least!
ETA: admittedly, i threw a minor tantrum myself last week, but i hadn’t slept and had been working for 20 hours, so i’m taking a mulligan on that one.
Angry Black Lady
@David Richey: Oh, and you don’t need to speak in Ebonics. I’ve been told that I’m very articulate.
firestarter
@Angry Black Lady:
ABL, I know you in real life. :) I’ll give you a hint: *stinkroll*
I wrote the post about going out and doing some good in the real world because I knew you had plans to go rescue that dog. You inspired me to write it–it was directed at many of the commenters. To me, going out and doing something kind like that is nine hella times more important than the bullshit that has been perpetrated in the comment section of this blog.
Hit me up in real life and we’ll figure out how best to network the woof.
Jules
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
word.
Angry Black Lady
@soonergrunt: i want to pour some gasoline on this thread, whip out a cigarette, light it with a match, toss it behind me, and feel the heat of the explosion at my back.
of course, this should all be filmed in slo mo. everything is better in slo mo.
Angry Black Lady
@firestarter: 10-4! over! ::kssht::
soonergrunt
@Angry Black Lady:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream
AfricanTumor Having American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-lookingguygal,”Joe BidensoonergruntDid I say that out loud?
soonergrunt
@Angry Black Lady: Grin
Darkrose
@Leland: If he was making a comparison to swooning fangirls, then there’s an easy comparison he could have made that wouldn’t invoke Nazi’s. All he’d need to do would be to Google “Twilight fansite”.
soonergrunt
@soonergrunt: It’s OK. I get angry quite a bit myself these days. I’m told I should be be in counseling for it so that I can learn to express my emotions in a positive manner and not allow previous life experiences to dictate my emotional responses to external stimuli.
My response is that people around me need to not be so fucking stupid.
soonergrunt
@Darkrose: And that, right there, is exactly the distillation of 687 posts into the short, simple, and correct understanding of this situation. He was specifically trying to invoke nazism.
Angry Black Lady
@soonergrunt: crap! i forgot to check Tumor-Having American on my census form! i’m waiting for my constitutional amendment. we THAs are mad as hell! Don’t tread on me!
MJ
Thanks for the post ABL. I really enjoyed reading
allmost of the responses.Chuck Butcher
@soonergrunt:
That beats the first response being to thin the heard.
doin’ my bit for 700
Chuck Butcher
Wasn’t that 700+ post that John C finally axed something about ‘teh gey’? he was pretty testy about that one. ‘course it seems to me it was one of his posts.
BTW , GG, I’ll say it again, swatting mosquitoes with a 12 ga ain’t sporting.
Mnemosyne
Only 7 more to go until we reach 700, so I’ll dip my toe back in before I go to bed.
@Leland:
Anyone who can claim that Leni Riefenstahl, the official propagandist of the Nazi Party, was just a “swooning fangirl” and therefore is a reasonable comparison to a private citizen with an Obama fansite is embarrassingly ignorant of World War II. Jesus, at least read Riefenstahl’s Wikipedia entry before you spout something that ignorant.
ETA: If Riefenstahl was a swooning fangirl, then Mengele was a compassionate doctor who provided much needed healthcare to concentration camp inmates.
Anne Laurie
@Angry Black Lady:
Blessings to you for that!
So, you could front-page his plight if necessary. Or, if you’re afraid of spoiling your cred, send me a j-peg and a description and I’ll front the dirty work (since I have no cred to spoil).
soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie:
You have plenty of cred–cred as the poster of animal rescue stories, and as the calm one on the lifeboat of crazed front pagers. You just don’t have any ‘angry’ cred.
soonergrunt
@Chuck Butcher: Don’t believe that I haven’t had that response, but that one would be frowned upon in polite company.
You just can’t climb a water tower with a high-powered rifle these days without upsetting people and getting uninvited to all of the swank cocktail parties. So I dump verbal acid on people instead.
arguingwithsignposts
@soonergrunt:
So what do we win if we get to over
9000700?I can’t believe it made it this far … on its creaky last legs.
soonergrunt
@Chuck Butcher: Yeah. That post, if memory serves, was about all of the emo going on at the time about gay people being being pissed about Obama not ending DADT with an executive order. His original post was specifically about the emo in the gay community.
And away we went…
soonergrunt
And, 700!
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’ll be expecting a full set of Ginsu steak knives and an automatic lightbulb washer.
arguingwithsignposts
@soonergrunt:
Look at you with all the gets! In terms of numbers, I think one earlier GG thread where he actually came into the comments and threw out “Dear Leader” this and “Obot” that at the commentariat got pretty high, also one of the Hamsher smackdowns.
But for lulz, David Richey and WyldPirate will really have to up their game to reach Michael Gassian levels.
ETA: have you been checking megan mcarglebargle’s christmas shopping list?
soonergrunt
Well, I’ve wanted new kitchen knives for a while, and I think I’m entitled after all of the hard work, you know?
I haven’t seen McMegan’s list yet, but I don’t think there’s ever been a more entitled person blogging professionally, so I’m certain it’s huge.
licensed to kill time
I can’t believe I
ateread the whole thing. {{{burp}}}Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt: Heh, I guess you’ve forgotten my ‘Field Guide to Your Neighborhood Womb Bigots’ series, shortly after I first got the keys. Cole actually had to shut down one thread, something so rare as to approximate uniqueness.
SciVo
@Angry Black Lady: Ah yes, the unflinching walk trope. I heartily approve!