I loves me some hot Glenn Greenwald on Jeff Goldberg action. And since everyone’s favorite gonzo Goldberg publicist is back from the DL, this seems like a good time for some more of it (h/t Turbulence):
“I don’t think that just because someone is wrong about something that they should forever have their credibility impaired,” he (Greenwald) told me in a phone interview. “But I think there are two things that distinguish this case. One is the consequentiality of it and the centrality he played. It wasn’t like he was just kind of wrong about something, he was one of the leading people validating the war. The thing that happened in the Iraq War is that obviously the right got behind it because the people on the right — the leaders on the right — were clearly behind it. But in order to make it a majoritarian movement, they had to get centrists and liberals behind it. So they needed liberal validators … There’s probably nobody that you can compare in influence to getting Democrats and liberals to support the war than Jeffrey Goldberg. It wasn’t just that he was for the war, he was using his status as a reporter to feed lies. I mean he didn’t just write one New Yorker piece but a second one too, and he was all over the television with this stuff saying that Saddam had a very active nuclear program and most importantly that Saddam had an enthusiastic alliance with al-Qaeda.”
[…..]“[Goldberg’s responses] are all substance free,” he told me. “It’s funny. It’s almost like his responses are three or four years behind. When I first started writing about criticizing media figures — establishment media figures — that was very much the reaction. It was a very lame sort of not-really-attentive response, just dismissive or plain mockery. Like, ‘I don’t have to respond because in my world he’s nobody and I’m somebody so the most I’m going to do is be derisive about this.’ That’s a journalist/blogger cliché from 2005, and most journalists know they can no longer get away with it. He’s living in a world where he thinks it doesn’t affect his reputation. Among his friends it doesn’t. I’m sure he calls [TIME writer] Joe Klein or whoever else I’ve criticized and he’s like ‘he’s an asshole and a prick, don’t worry about that.’ But I guarantee you that there are a lot more people reading the stuff I write than the stuff he writes, in terms of sheer number. And the level of impact that that kind of level of critique has is infinitely greater than it was three years ago. So I’m sure he tells himself and convinces himself that it doesn’t actually matter but it does. And it’s hurting his credibility.”
Let’s get a few things out in the open to save time. Just as Al Gore is fat, Glenn Greenwald is an asshole. It’s silly to talk about this at all, because the bombing will never happen and it’s also silly to to criticize Jeff Goldberg for saying it will happen. And to quote Wonkette, you are all anti-Semites for even reading this post.
Felonious Wench
That mental picture will be burned into my brain for a long, long, long time, DougJ.
Damn you, sir, have you no decency?
General Stuck
Midget Mud Wrestling, and Dougj is the ringmaster. What a waste.
Comrade Luke
WTF is “majoratarian”? Are those the stupid morons who are Very Serious People, who belong in a majoritarium?
Bob Loblaw
Embrace the solipsism.
Yutsano
@Felonious Wench: Well not put too fine a point on it, but at least one of the participants would go there. Yeah I’m gonna just shut up now before I get cyberlynched too.
Chad N Freude
Hawt Jew on Jew action.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m hijacking this thread for to point to some hot MattY on Reihan Salam action (via LGM).
The tongue-bath “White Malcolm X” defense is pretty ugly.
morzer
@Felonious Wench:
Well, it could be worse.. just imagine Dick Cheney and Karl Rove getting.. jiggly.
Felonious Wench
@morzer:
Yeah, I now despise you too.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: Hawt goy on goy action.
Cat Lady
@General Stuck:
Let the Greenwald knob slobbering begin in 3..2..
Yutsano
@Cat Lady: We just can’t seem to help ourselves when it comes to exploiting our sexual innuendoes can we?
Nick
Watch out, you might get the firebaggers all excited
Bob Loblaw
@Cat Lady:
People like you and Stuck are genuinely oblivious.
El Tiburon
@Cat Lady:
Pfffffttt…
Look, Greenwald is one of the leading, intellectual voices on the left. Period.
Yeah, I’ll slob his knob for the work he does for the cause.
Much like Goldberg, I have yet to see any substantive critique here other than he write too much. For shame!
So please, lets see some valid critique with some substance besides simply calling him an asshole or similar. I would really like to hear it.
Jay B.
@Cat Lady:
Yeah, heaven forbid you agree with his central premise that we were lied and corralled into a war that has proven disastrous on almost every conceivable level. Nom, nom, nom! I’m so fucking gay I can hardly believe it!
Cat Lady
@Yutsano:
Innuendo?
Greenwald is right about Goldberg, but his fanbois give me the heebie jeebies. Those are not mutually exclusive things.
General Stuck
@Cat Lady:
Yup, and you called it. :)
Cat Lady
@General Stuck:
….1
Comrade Jake
What’s that, the blog equivalent of “my dick is bigger than yours!”
?
Is it ironic that Greenwald can’t help but walk around with his zipper down? I can’t decide.
Larkspur
@Cat Lady: Then diss his fanbois instead always applying the snark directly to Greenwald.
Jay B.
@Cat Lady:
“Innuendo?”
You’re right. You openly called people cocksuckers because they agree with a faggot who writes on the Internet. There was innuendo at all, it was right there in the text.
burnspbesq
The amazing thing is that Greenwald thinks that doing stuff like this enhances his brand.
Larkspur
Yes! Yes! 3…2…1
Sometimes I don’t mind being predictable.
morzer
Since we are thread-jacking shamelessly, I think I’ve found James Inhofe’s moment of opportunity:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/satanist-church-rents-oklahoma-civic-center-exorcism-ritual/story?id=11524098
It’s always gratifying to see one’s suspicions of what libertarians really think confirmed.
Pancake
Gleenwald: “…And it’s hurting his credibility….”
That’s rich coming from someone like Gleenwald, a fellow who has less credibility than Andrew Sullivan still posing as a conservative.
Jay B.
I predict a lame comeback by reactionary anti-Greenwald losers who still can’t explain why he’s wrong in 3…2..
oklahomo
@morzer:
Isn’t that in the Book of Revelations, right abut the time the seas all turn to blood?
Larkspur
Okay, y’all. Thread’s yours. I’m gonna go look for some hurricane news.
burnspbesq
@Comrade Jake:
It’s actually worse. Dick size is verifiable.
This is the Revenge of the Guy Who Was Stuffed Into Empty Lockers by Football Players All Through High School.
Bob Loblaw
It really shouldn’t be this easy to troll your own website…
DougJ
@Comrade Jake:
I liked that too.
burnspbesq
@Jay B.:
“I predict a lame comeback by reflexive anti-Greenwald losers in 3…2..”
I’m not wasting a lame comeback on you. You’re incapable of understanding it, and unworthy of my attention.
Jay B.
@burnspbesq:
Right, because he’s a fucking Mary, amirite? The pansy prolly can’t even throw a football — wrist is too limp.
Or is this just you “enhancing your brand”?
EDIT: It’s also self-defeating to claim intellectual and moral superiority while claiming it’s not worthy of your attention when you give it enough attention to reply to it.
It makes you look like an idiot who doesn’t even understand what he writes.
burnspbesq
“Help us, Marty-wan Lederman. You’re our only hope.”
Zipperupus
Greenwald has been wrong. He is right on nearly everything, IMO.
But he was wrong about Citizens United. He was wrong about Ron Paul. He was wrong about the ridiculous conspiracy theory of “the bad guy who is scapegoated for the legislation Obama SECRETLY desires.”
I don’t really care. Kudos for trying to take on the liberal apologists for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. He is doing great work in this and other regards. But being his sycophant is unbecoming.
Chad N Freude
The language and imagery in this thread are disgusting. I’m going to report this to the Pope.
burnspbesq
@Jay B.:
Show me where I said anything about Greenwald’s sexual orientation. You can’t. Stop projecting your baggage on me. It’s all yours. You own it.
First rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.
mcd410x
The best part of Greenwald today:
“Every retrospective from supporters of the attack on Iraq, if they’re to be honest and worthwhile, should read more or less like John Cole’s, from 2008.”
Hats off to both Cole and Greenwald.
General Stuck
@burnspbesq:
Obama IS worse than Bush
That was my Eephus pitch, btw. Lame, but hard to hit.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: Let the homophobe rant. He’s the one whose fixated on it. You have better things to talk about.
burnspbesq
@General Stuck:
On detainee issues, I think Obama is worse than Bush. Obama knows better. Either try the fuckers in the United States District Court, or cut them loose. Period. Full stop.
mclaren
It’s baffling that Greenwald hammers away on Goldberg while ignoring Fareed Zakaria. In fact Zakaria was one of the handful of people in the room in late 2000 with Cheney and Wolfowitz who cranked out that infamous report for Dick Cheney that set the Iraq war buildup in motion.
[Book review of State of Denial, Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 2006]
Yet after helping push America into one of our most disastrous strategic blunders, Zakaria now holds court on Sunday mornings as a respected foreign affairs talk show host on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS” and he edits the international edition of Newsweek. And he writes a weekly column on foreign affairs.
This would be as though Paul Wolfowitz had a prime time talk show on foreign affairs and a gig editing TIME magazine, or as though Richard Perle had his own PBS show discussing the world situation each week plus a weekly column about foreign affairs in the Washington Post. It would be like Judith Miller becoming editor of the Boston Globe and getting a talk show about international relations on NPR.
Wolfowitz and Perle and Miller are justly reviled as paraiahs and have been thrown out of the community of foreign relations scholars; but somehow, Zakaria has managed to slither out of getting hammered for his crucial role in helping to drag America into the Iraq quagmire. Zakaria continues to pontificate about America’s role in the world on TV and in print as though he were a respected pundit, instead of just another warmongering neocon whore like Perle and Wolfowitz and Miller.
Jay B.
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, you’ve totally pwned him and me throughout this thread. So I totally believe that you hate him not because he’s a queer that your totally butch high school football heroes stuffed him in a locker (thereby, I guess, turning him into a civil libertarian), but it’s because he gives a shit about civil liberties, doesn’t like a warmonger and is prolix about it?
…1.
Ailuridae
@Jay B.:
I don’t think you’ll see much criticism of Glenn here regarding his perfectly accurate and justified take down of an a war-mongering ass hole like Jeff Goldberg. Now, where you will pretty quickly see Glenn is beyond full of shit is in a post like this re: the public option where he makes a lot of accusations about what could be done and ignores the whip-counting that was actually done that he reference in his own piece. He references a whip count that has passed 40 (dubious) and is approaching 50 (laughably untrue) and now six months later has still yet to clarify/issue a correction that the whip count, unsurprisingly, stopped far short of the 50 votes. It was a publicly published whip count and he still hasn’t corrected a pretty basic fact that anyone can access by either 1) talking to Chris Bowers or 2) reading his whip count archives on open left.
Cat Lady
@burnspbesq:
Seriously. I have absolutely no knowledge of or interest in Greenwald’s sexuality, and can honestly say I don’t want to know or care to know, but why is it so easy to get his fanbois to think that anything short of tongue bathing his every word is all about that? It’s just really fucking weird.
On that note, that’s all I have to say about it. I got season 1 and 2 of The Wire for my birthday and I have to go watch now. FSM bless Glenn Greenwald, and his mission to make Jeff Goldberg STFU.
Jay B.
@Chad N Freude:
No, no, I’m the knob-gobbler who thinks Greenwald is usually right. The homophobe is the one who thinks agreeing with him is the equivalent of sucking his cock. You might have missed that what with your head up your ass and everything.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Just to get your back there, I’ve been on this blog over two years. Yo and I have a healthy respect for each other, also we’ve had our disagreements. In all that time, not ONCE has the subject of my sexual ever been slighted by you. I’ve never seen you try to tar that brush on Greenwald either. So call me the fag version of Uncle Tom or whatever, but I stand by my assessment here.
@Jay B.: Please note who brought out the six letter F word first. Here’s a hint: use a mirror.
burnspbesq
@Ailuridae:
Greenwald will issue a correction on the same day I give birth to twins.
El Cid
Most of these sorts of points are those which have been raised over the years by sorts such as FAIR, and the points of analyses of Goldberg’s role in propaganda hackery is an extremely important topic in the topic of analyzing figures prominently writing and speaking on US foreign policy.
For example, here, and maybe people could check these sources and avoid their particular personal issues with GG.
Jay B.
@Ailuridae:
You and I both know that’s complete bullshit. People here hate Greenwald because he hammers Obama on civil liberties and uses unalloyed contempt in doing it. Plus he writes long. And he seems insufferable.
That whip count, by the way, included Harry Reid, who back in October of 2009 seemed to have 56 to 57 votes for it.
Chad N Freude
From Wikipedia, which is undoubtedly less accurate and more judgmental than Political Affairs.net – Marxist Thought Online
General Stuck
@burnspbesq: Given they were Bush’s prisoners to begin with and Obama has tried to try them here and has faced a no funding for trial congress, and will at some point, at least get them out of Gitmo and onto American soil, then I doubt he is worse than Bush. And there are but 50 left, and release them where? No country will accept them, or most would have been released already. So release them on American soil? With the malignant Islamophobia sweeping this country. He would likely be impeached before you could say birth certificate.
Chad N Freude
@Jay B.: I believe I referred to you as a homophobe who is obsessing in this thread about Greenwald’s sexuality. But Maybe I’m not seeing clearly with my head up my ass and all.
mclaren
@Cat Lady:
Lucky you.
Prediction: you’ll be jonesing for S3, S4 and S5 real soon now. S3 is even better than S2. And S4 is awesome.
Jay B.
@Yutsano:
Oh fucking christ, I was using hyperbole and terrible words to underline the homophobic/tough guy bullshit that other people on this thread objected to as well. Your pal b just imagined Greenwald was stuffed in lockers for amusement for some macho reason, I suppose.
You know, that, or someone could try, oh I don’t know, argue Greenwald’s point or lack thereof.
@Chad N Freude: Then you, like Yutsano, don’t understand things like “context”. I’m the knob-gobbling fanboi of the weakling who got stuffed in lockers, after all.
RareSanity
@DougJ
nice title…
I don’t care what anybody says, “Off The Wall” was ten times better than “Thriller”
Chad N Freude
@JayB: What do you get from being so offensive?
burnspbesq
@General Stuck:
Yup. Let the Witness Protection Program do its thing. Who needs to know? If we can smuggle people into Gitmo in the dead of night, we should be able to smuggle them out.
MikeJ
@RareSanity: Off the Wall was an incredible album.
Once when I saw Alex at the Black Cat, he said he was going to do the last good song Michael Jackson recorded. I asked if it was going to be ABC, but he corrected me, and he was right. He did the title track from Off the Wall.
Mark S.
I can understand why people would think Saddam still had WMDs (though nuclear weapons were a bit of a stretch) but I don’t see how anyone would think Saddam was in cahoots with Osama unless they knew absolutely nothing about either man. If you think all Muslims are the same, it might make sense, but that doesn’t excuse all the supposedly serious people who fell for it.
Jay B.
@Chad N Freude:
#6:Hawt Jew on Jew action.
Spare me the lecture on civility, Chad.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Thanks, man.
Chad N Freude
@JayB: I’ve retraced the sequence of comments and I see what happened here. You do come across as homophobic. If you’re really gay, maybe you should establish your cred before using homophobic language. Maybe if you hang out here long enough you’ll be able to express sarcasm without sounding like something you’re not. And with less pugnacity.
Chad N Freude
@Jay B.: It’s like blacks using the N-word, dude, only Jew is an epithet only to anti-semites.
AxelFoley
Just curious as to when this “Al Gore is fat” meme started. Not that it’s not true–it is–but why do I see this on blogs a lot nowadays?
morzer
Well, this is jolly….
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Should have been derogatory epithet. It’s been a long day.
Ailuridae
@Jay B.:
No, he had 56 or 57 votes to pass a HCR bill with a public option in it. That stalled with a compromise that saw an at-cost expansion of Medicare for those over 50 – a far more progressive piece of legislation.
After the Brown election the fixes had to be passed through reconciliation. During that time Chris Bowers whipped whether or not the Democrats would vote to include a public option in the same package. This is plainly what GG is referencing in his post. And the results of that whip count came in far below 50 votes. Its not hard to find that information.
Glenn in the post I quoted seems to “know” that someone has a whip count of 50 senators who were willing to do a public option via reconciliation but the count he is referencing for his claim of 40 votes never passed 45. And, again, its six months later and he still hasn’t had the integrity to correct it.
AxelFoley
@Cat Lady:
Nah, you have to go to DailyKos for that shit. Greenwald gets his ass handed to him here.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: Jollity is our speciality on this blog. To what in particular do you refer?
RareSanity
@MikeJ:
Then I would say that both of you have excellent ears for music. If you don’t have it already, buy the special edition CD of “Off The Wall”. It has interviews with Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton, and a couple of home recorded demos of songs from the album.
One of them is a demo recorded at a home studio of “She Got Me Workin'”, with Michael singing, Tito playing keyboards, Janet and Randy doing percussion…live, in one take…awesome!
AxelFoley
@El Tiburon:
I stand corrected…
Yutsano
@Chad N Freude: This thread went way off the rails. I have no idea where. I do know my hackles were just fine until that six letter F word showed up. I think I’m gonna let it go, mostly because as far as I could tell no one was arguing Greenwald was wrong or mistaken.
Ailuridae
@mclaren:
Season 4 of The Wire should be a disappointment to any reasonably thinking person or anyone that actually knows the history of Baltimore. Season 5 is an absolute fucking disaster.
Chad N Freude
A very unusual occurrence here.
AxelFoley
@Jay B.:
But I repeat myself…
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
Oh, just the joyous and warm humanity that seems to have overtaken everyone tonight… you know…
Chad N Freude
@morzer: Yeah, it’s a lot like the festivities that accompanied the Spanish Inquisition.
Yutsano
@morzer: Don’t make me do it…I’m warning you right now man…I will…I’m shameless like that.
Jay B.
@Chad N Freude:
I’ve been here for years, thanks, though it’s gotten worse. If you think it’s homophobic to react against homophobia using raw language, that’s your problem with “context”. I have used “nigger” in the same way. I’m vehemently opposed to feminizing your opponents (i.e. “knob-gobbling fanboi”) and I’m also in favor of using homophobic and racist language to make plain the issue. Most homophobes and racists don’t consider themselves such.
I understand if people bristle at it or don’t like it, but then it’s really inexcusable to let the implications of what other people said go by and complain about the guy who used faggot to show how stupid it was to complain about knob-gobbling. Even if “Cat Lady” was ignorant of Greenwald’s sexuality, she equated cocksucking with a kind of fraudulent support of a guy. THAT’S homophobic. Literally.
And your “Hawt Jew on Jew action” crack isn’t offensive to me, but it’s hardly civil. Not with the Jew part, but, since you need everything spelled out, it refers to, in this case, the image of two guys having sex when they were really having a profound policy disagreement.
Chad N Freude
@Yutsano: @morzer: All together now: “Kumbaya, my Lord, . . .”
morzer
@Jay B.:
I think you might be taking it all a touch too seriously. People use X on Y language all the time without a real sexual reference. It’s a just a throwaway line.
Nick
@Ailuridae: There were definitely 50 Senators who supported the public option, but less than 50 who were willing to use reconciliation. Russ Feingold even hedged on that. i think others like McCaskill and Begich too supported a public option, but wasn’t willing to use reconciliation. I know at least one Senator, Menendez, his office told me he was hesitant to use reconciliation because it expires about a certain amount of time and would have to be reauthorized in an unknown political climate…Republicans could end up privatizing it or cutting benefits on it if they were in charge when reconciliation expires. By the time he got there, he lost the Jane Hamsher crowd.
This is political logic that doesn’t get into the minds of the professional left.
In hindsight, I still believe we should have went for the Olympia Snowe trigger proposal…yeah the trigger wouldn’t be pulled, but if we had closed the door on healthcare three months earlier and worked on the economic situation right away, we wouldn’t be facing losses and can run on pulling it ourselves.
Again, too much political logic for the professional left brain.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
Kumbaya.. O Lord, kumbaya
Yutsano
@morzer: Isn’t it also a wee bit sexist that women can’t be knob polishers? I’ve always considered it an equal opportunity snark tool.
morzer
@Yutsano:
hmmm is there a law written on tablets of iron that bars them from such status?
Chad N Freude
@Jay B.: You sound almost reasonable here, but you obscured your intent with the language.
The two guys thing is the first sentence of DougJ’s post. I will defend to the death my right to riff on what the front-pagers say.
AxelFoley
@RareSanity:
Whoa, whoa, whoa…you take that shit back! As awesome as “Off The Wall” was, “Thriller” is the greatest album of all time.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: I stand corrected. Wait, this is Balloon-Juice. I have to challenge you to a duel of words over this insult.
Jay B.
@morzer:
Oh, really? Thanks. I’m new to the Internet. I’m the one who is being accused of being homophobic because I used a verboten word in defense of Greenwald.
@Yutsano:
Of course women suck cocks, but they are rarely called “fanbois” when doing so. But hey, if you can get offended at my word choice while remaining unconcerned by actual homophobia, that’s your choice.
Glen Tomkins
Not that Churchill’s example is some sort of imprimatur…
But even if Glenn Greenwald is an asshole, he’s our asshole, dammit.
Omnes Omnibus
Greenwald is a polemicist, a very good one. As a writer of advocacy or persuasion, he can leave something to be desired. The strident tone and imputation of worst possible motives that he tends toward will not cause people who are not already seeing issues from his point of view to change.
Yutsano
@Jay B.: Sigh. It seems inevitable that an argument becomes impassable because of one individual’s certitude, so I’m just gonna defer. We indirectly hurt Glenn’s fee-fees even though he’s a big kid and has shown he is more than capable of taking care of himself. That make you happy?
Nick
@Omnes Omnibus: The problem with polemicists is that people take them seriously.
Omnes Omnibus
@AxelFoley: London Calling.
morzer
@Jay B.:
Well, maybe letting things cool down would be wise. As far as I can tell, people here generally agree that Greenwald is on the side of the angels, even if some have questions about his tactics or prose style. I suspect that everyone has become a touch too vehement tonight, and we could probably all agree that we’ve shed more heat than light on the issues that matter. Maybe a general agreement to drop the subject would be in order?
Before anyone asks, I do like cheese and I am descended from a monkey. As for surrendering, I only do so for money and in the face of superior forces.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: He could very well show up in comments to defend his honor and call everyone Obots.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Christ, you idiots.
This is what concerns you dolts? That somebody might have something nice to say about Glenn Greenwald?
The fucking topic is: if a person plays a large role in spreading lies to support an unnecessary war, can that person ever be trusted on such issues again? Yes or no? What do you think about it?
Oh, right, what you think is that somebody is sure to say something nice about Glenn, even though he’s the worst person to ever walk the earth. Of course.
Pathetic.
RareSanity
@AxelFoley:
Best-selling?
Yes.
Awesome album?
Yes.
Popular culture and worldwide phenomenon?
1000 times, yes.
Better musically than “Off the Wall”?
No.
“Thriller” was incredible, but, for complexity of arrangement, range of themes, and instrumentation, “Off the Wall” is untouchable.
Yutsano
@morzer: My family
got kicked outhad the good sense to leave there over 500 years ago, although we’ve only been American for about 100. My brother and I were joking about being “Anchor great-grandbabies” the other night because I don’t think he actually entered in completely on the up and up. But he wasn’t Messican so I’m sure I’ll be fine next time I’m in Arizona.@Omnes Omnibus: Heh. I freely admit that’s hella cool when Glenn comes to visit us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: Well, I think we all agree that Goldberg has forfeited his credibility for all time, so the only issue worth arguing about is Greenwald: does his style outweigh his substance or vice versa? On this issue, opinions vary.
AxelFoley
Unless it’s my cock getting sucked on–preferably by a hot chick–I don’t want to hear about any cocksucking, gay or straight.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: I have enjoyed the visits of the many people who have come here to defend or explain themselves. Makes the place fun and gives me more respect for the people who do it.
El Cid
As in most matters, people interested in reading Glenn Greenwald — I do, and I do it every single day and I assume I will be for the foreseeable future — [will continue to do so] and I don’t give the slightest shit what bitching etc. are on this other blog here.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@morzer:
If that was the case, we’d be actually discussing what he wrote in this excerpt, and not whether someone is sure to slobber his knob or how poor his whip counts from two months ago were.
If you don’t like Glenn Greenwald, fine. But you assholes have made a fucking fetish object of him. It’s goddam Pavlovian, the way every. single. discussion. that concerns the man in any way turns into a bunch of fucktarded sniping about petty crap.
GET OVER IT ALREADY YOU WEASELS! EVERYONE BUT YOU IS TIRED OF THIS STUPID SHIT!
I’m sooooo sorry that the 2008 Democratic primary ended and left you without a good excuse to hate on leftists. I know it’s so much more satisfying than hating the right. (OK, I don’t know this at all, but it’s apparently true for you fucks.) But it’s 2010, GET OVER IT.
slag
@Chad N Freude: Thanks for that. I learned something.
Pretty much the rest of this thread is an asshole.
El Tiburon
@AxelFoley:
I have yet to see greenwald get his ass handed to him. Perhaps you can point me to where this occurred. All I see are the usual juvenile taunts.
So I will ask again: someone, anyone, direct me to a valid link or otherwise where greenwald was proven to be demonstrably wrong and did not correct his error. I am sure the illustrious crew here would gladly point out any glaring errors greenwald makes.
So I will ask for the umpteenth time: let’s see the evidence.
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Except the small number of posters here who are utter tribalists regarding all things Israel I don’t think much of anyone around these parts thinks Jeff Goldberg should be trusted about anything.
And if you think a post written by DougJ of all people about Goldberg is really an invitation to discuss Goldberg’s credibility going forward you are missing out on some meta here. In Doug’s mind, it is pretty clearly already been decided long ago that Goldberg has no credibility going forward.
morzer
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I am sorry, I missed your discussion of what Greenwald said. Could you repeat it for those of us who are almost old enough to qualify for John Cole’s geriatric extirpation program?
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I’m sooooo sorry that the 2008 Democratic primary ended and left you without a good excuse to hate on leftists. I know it’s so much more satisfying than hating the right. (OK, I don’t know this at all, but it’s apparently true for you fucks.) But it’s 2010, GET OVER IT.
Actually my problems with Greenwald stem from him telling outright lies during the health care debate. Lies that aren’t tough to demonstrate and many months later he has yet to acknowledge.
FWIW, I would never call anyone with the libertarian streak of GG a “leftist” but then again unlike him, and possibly you, I make an effort to express other folk’s beliefs in good faith.
AxelFoley
@El Tiburon:
Search the archives a few months ago when Greenwald came here and got into it with John. His shit got jumped on here.
But, if you insist on your boy Glenn being proven wrong:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/1/898262/-Glenn-Greenwalds-Unhinged-Attack-on-Obama-and-Democrats
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Ailuridae: Right, people at this site don’t trust Goldberg. Well, Eemom does, but she’s kinda dumb. Yet, the man is still a high-profile “journalist” whose opinion carries a hundred times the clout Greenwald has with the MSM and Washington power players.
But nobody is interested in spitting some bile at Goldberg? Nope, they wanna talk more shit about Greenwald. It’s the usual garbage: make a scapegoat of someone who’s powerless while the guilty powerful walk free.
If the morons here spent even half the time they spent ripping down teh perfeshunal left as they did ripping down the right (you know, the people whose goals include inflicting misery on everyone who’s not just like them), I’d have no problem. They don’t. Even when given a choice between a guy on the left who’s too strident and a guy on the right who helped push the disastrous Iraq War, they’ll choose the guy on the left to attack every time.
Fuck you assholes.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
There were definitely 50 Senators who supported the public option, but less than 50 who were willing to use reconciliation. Russ Feingold even hedged on that. i think others like McCaskill and Begich too supported a public option, but wasn’t willing to use reconciliation. I know at least one Senator, Menendez, his office told me he was hesitant to use reconciliation because it expires about a certain amount of time and would have to be reauthorized in an unknown political climate…Republicans could end up privatizing it or cutting benefits on it if they were in charge when reconciliation expires. By the time he got there, he lost the Jane Hamsher crowd.
Either Bob Menendez is dumb or you are mistaken. Establishing a public option through reconciliation would not lead to the PO sunsetting in ten years because a PO by definition and design can not add to the deficit.
And again, the PO was whipped before the HCR debate started and less than 45 Senators came out for it explicitly. 57 were then willing to vote for a larger bill that included a PO but that doesn’t mean they were in favor of the PO just that they were willing to pass a bill containing one.
Then the whipcongress/OpenLeft count after the Brown victory also stalled at anywhere from 24 to 37 to 43 to 47 but never, ever crossed 50. These are the easily verifiable facts.
In hindsight the trigger was likely the best option to getting something done as it eliminated the individual leverage of one sociopath (Lieberman) and one very dishonest broker (NelsonNE)
DougJ
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I think a lot of people here are interested in spitting bile at Goldberg, certainly including myself and Ailuridae.
EDIT: That said, I don’t think the point here is that Greenwald is right because Greenwald is teh awesome. I don’t agree with most of Greenwald’s political analyses, but when it comes to nailing people like Goldberg, he gets his facts his lined up in a row as well as anyone.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@morzer: This thread was already 90 posts of garbage when I got here, so don’t blame me.
Jeff Goldberg needs to be brought low. His credibility needs to be broken. But, we all know that’s not going to happen. It’d take a massive effort from many, many people to accomplish this, because there are many vested and wealthy interests who were very happy with what Goldberg did. It could be accomplished, I suppose, but for all that effort he’d be replaced by the next toady willing to say or write anything to be an insider.
All we can really do if make sure that the reasons not to trust the man are clearly explained and freely available to anyone looking for information about him. You might recognize this as what Greenwald is doing here.
Oh, but he updates a lot, fuck him.
Ailuridae
@El Tiburon:
You mean like when he wrote that there were 50 votes for a PO through reconciliation and the whip count showed them far short of 50 votes? Do you mean like that?
Here.
60th Street
I like Greenwald, overall. But the same glaring narcissism that served to macerate Jeff Goldberg’s credibility in the above excerpt also drives his obsession with the scent of his own conspiracy theories.
I love the “rotating congressional Democratic villain” theory! It’s fucking priceless in its purity and complete dependence on isolation from proof.
@Jay B.:
Don’t tell Lindsey Graham that.
General Stuck
Delightful thread.
morzer
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
So that would be a yes to what Greenwald argues here then?
eemom
Salt please, no butter.
[munch munch munch]
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Ailuridae:
In May of 2009 Ben Nelson — yes, that Ben Nelson — was quoted as being “open” to the public option. If Dem leadership truly wanted a PO the time to work for it was late winter through spring of ’09. Honestly, the circumstantial evidence that they didn’t really want it is overwhelming.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@DougJ: Greenwald is a monster when it comes to marshaling the facts, but he’s not so good at analysis. The guy’s a lawyer, through and through, and sometimes I don’t think he fully grasps that it takes more than facts to win people over to your POV. It seems like that really frustrates him.
I’d take a dozen Greenwalds over a Goldberg, though. It seems many around here would prefer Goldberg, though, and that’s just fucking idiotic coming from the supposed left.
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Oh, but he updates a lot, fuck him.
But that’s not the argument anyone is making. He spent months lying about the most progressive piece of legislation in 40 plus years and it turns out that he’s plainly unmistakably wrong about a key assertion in that attack. It is six months later and he still won’t correct the record.
If he stuck to the Jeff Goldberg and Joe Klein attacks where he cites actual text that would be great. So, yeah, it has nothing to do with updates.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@morzer: Not really. Greenwald thinks that Goldberg actually is taking hits to his credibility with the people who matter. I doubt that. Even if he was, willing propagandists are a dime a dozen, so eliminating one from the discourse is a temporary victory at best.
burnspbesq
@AxelFoley:
Thriller is awesome. But it’s not the greatest album of all time in any universe that has “Kind of Blue,” “Giant Steps,” “Blues and the Abstract Truth,” “Pet Sounds,” “Rubber Soul,” “Buffalo Springfield,” “The Gilded Palace of Sin,” “Band of Gypsies,” “Bitches Brew,” “Countdown to Ecstasy,” “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” “Waiting for Columbus,” “More Songs About Buildings and Food,” “Shoot Out the Lights,” “Everywhere at Once,” “How Will the Wolf Survive,” “The Telluride Sessions,” or “Bring the Family,” to name only a few.
DougJ
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Far be it from me to speak for the commenters here, but I don’t know if there’s a single regular commenter here — even including eemom and celticdragonchick — who prefers Goldberg to Greenwald.
fasteddie9318
I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT!
RareSanity
@burnspbesq:
Ah, burnspbesq, my music and audio nemesis. We meet again on the
fieldthread of battle.Just kiddin’…
Although, I note that their is no mention of Earth, Wind and Fire on your list…incomplete to say the least, I think you will agree, no?
burnspbesq
@RareSanity:
Mea culpa. I also didn’t mention any Emmylou Harris, Tony Rice, or Solas. Gotta stop somewhere.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Ailuridae: That’s reasonable. I think he was pretty useless on healthcare this summer. Hell, I don’t even read him much anymore.
I just don’t understand why people reflexively start flinging their crap like monkeys every time they see his name. Like I said earlier, people longing for the shit-flinging golden age of 2008 seem to be the worst offenders. Hell, you’ll still occasionally read someone whining about PUMAs here, a year and a half after they were remotely relevant in any way.
Why do supposed lefties enjoy smacking the left around so much? If you’re just looking to dump hatred and anger on something, well, there’s still the right-wingers bent on ruining your life. Or, hell, take up watching sports and hate the Yankees or something. Why Greenwald?
(And yeah, point about Greenwald being libertarian rather than leftist, though since he doesn’t really bother with any sort of “taxation is theft” storylines I think he fits safely into the left end of our country’s shriveled political spectrum.)
Corner Stone
@Chad N Freude:
Lolwhut?
RareSanity
@burnspbesq:
Touche’.
Corner Stone
@DougJ: I think you’re on a limb here.
Ailuridae
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I have no idea what the Nelson anecdote is supposed to demonstrate. Ben Nelson has never been in favor of a public option but was willing to deal on that and things like Medicaid expansion (that he was also opposed to) to legislate.
Honestly, the circumstantial evidence that they didn’t really want it is overwhelming.
It is only remotely overwhelming evidence to someone who is willing to believe that outcome in advance.
Again, open left whipped the public option before the debate began and only had 43-45 members of the Senate willing to go on record as being in favor of a public option. By all measures Reid got the Senate to 57 or 58 votes and then to 59 with the more progressive Medicare expansion. Lieberman held out. That sucks. But by my count that is anywhere from 12 to 16 people who refused to indicate at any point they were in favor of a PO that came out for a massive expansion of public insurance (above and beyond the 40B a year the country committed to a medicaid expansion)
When reconciliation was on the table again OL whipped the Senate and found a similar number.
But the thing is, and as I mention all the time the PO can pass at any point with 51 Senate votes as can a medicare expansion. So if the votes were there why didn’t some left hero like Russ Feingold immediately introduce it right after the ACA passed. And the answer to that is plain: without other enticements to centrist dems it had no chance to pass the Senate with 50 votes plus Joe. Heck without further enticements it couldn’t pass the House as a stand alone pice of legislation most likely.
mclaren
@Ailuridae:
S5 had some problems. Curious why you didn’t like S4, though. The whole plot thread dealing with the Baltimore school system and the relationship twixt kids failing in school and winding up dealing on the corner seemed dead-on accurate to me. That part of S4 is basically a more detailed version of the non-fiction book The Corner, and everyone agrees that’s an accurate depiction of the Baltimore underclass at the time.
The way the newly-elected mayor had to compromise also seemed unusually realistic. I don’t know how realistic the Marlo Stanfield subplot was, but apparently Baltimore drug dealers told the producers of The Wire that they got it mostly right.
What wasn’t realistic about S4? What didn’t fit with the reality of the city of Baltimore? I’m not from Baltimore and don’t know the area, so I’m genuinely curious.
burnspbesq
@RareSanity:
I’ve got an appointment on Saturday to audition a new headphone amp for my desktop system. As it turns out, I’m just not a tube guy. Tranzisters rool!
Objective Scrutator
Huh. I swear I posted something on how Goldberg reminded me of Boethius’ statements on who was a master of music, but stupid WP decided to press my words into Oblivion.
Boethius stated that musical theorists, not performers or composers, were the only people who were entirely devoted to Reason and could judge various characteristics. In the same way, I think that we should take men such as Goldberg as the only rational observers of Iran. Liberals are like performers and composers since they “slavishly follow” the “intuitive composers'” claim that Iran does not have or pursue ‘hard’ nuclear liquids, or even that Israel will send out the nukes.
As someone who surely styles himself as issuing edicts of Reason, akin to Boethius, I know that Mr. Goldberg will provide proof of his assertions. Either that, or the invisible Guidonian Hand of the free market went off to play.
Chad N Freude
@DougJ: Jrod’s comment is the most awesome misreading around here in the entire history of the Most Depressing Blog On The Internet(tm). But then what can you expect from someone who steals cookies? He’s probably left a trail of tearful Girl Scouts all across the country.
RareSanity
@burnspbesq:
I’ll have to find the article that describes the differences in response between tubes and transistors. You would find it very very interesting.
I think that the gist of it was that, as long as the level was kept below clipping, the frequency response of transistors is better than tubes. But, once the level starts clipping, tubes distort in a more “organic” way, where as transistors just fall off a cliff.
This is the basis for the description of the “warmth” of tubes.
Let me know what you decided on once you get it.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
He messes with young girl’s cookies? What a monster of iniquity!
Next thing you know, he’ll be emptying their caches….
Chad N Freude
@Objective Scrutator:
I think it may be engaged in masturbation at the moment.
Svensker
@fasteddie9318:
I DON’T KNOW EITHER. FUCK YOU.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: OMG. I literally really truly laughed out loud at that.
Ailuridae
@mclaren:
So Lester Freamon is a good cop and a bright guy right? And he’s looking for bodies in the Western district right? Daniels is running the district, Jimmy is walking beat in the district, the handsome black fuck-up that used to work with Herc is no longer a fuck-up and is doing good police work in the district (Lester knows this from Daniels) and Prez is teaching in the district and diligent, smart Lester Freamon gets the cable company and Sanitation workers to dig in random tunnels looking for bodies? WTF? Did they hire a team of writers from the Sopranos or some similar shit. You don’t take an all-time great TV character and fuck him over for sport like Simon et al did with Lester in that season. And that’s the worst of many problem. It was still watchable and I was amazed how good the teen actors were but it was no longer a great show.
Then there is the larger fact that the whole narrative about Carcetti ignores all of Baltimore’s history of electing mayors His ambition and inability to continue in Baltimore as mayor because he is white drives the last two seasons’ narratives. Look at the list of Baltimore’s mayors. In the alternate timeline where Carcetti would have been running for mayor Baltimore had only elected Kurt Schmoke. During the near entirety of the filming of the show Baltimore had a white ethnic mayor who was wildly popular.
For a show that prided itself on being gritty and real ignoring the history that it really isn’t hard to get elected as a white mayor of Baltimore is fucking ridiculous. Having that be the impetus for two seasons of action is lazy and cheap.
geg6
Any fucking idiot thinks I spend or ever spent one minute of any day of my life believing a word Goldberg says needs to back right the fuck up. Greenwald may be an idiot when it comes to any sort of political analysis or domestic policy and an arrogant git who can’t ever admit to a mistake, but he’s, I have no doubt, a terrific attorney when it comes to building a case, laying out the facts, and sticking to the case no matter what. And when he does that, usually only when he tackles legal matters and media failure, he’s brilliant and I’m glad he’s on my side. I can’t ever imagine feeling that way about JG.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Ailuridae:
What’s most amusing about this post is that there is nothing in it that contradicts what I said.
Corner Stone
@fasteddie9318: Man, I was already on your side but anybody who starts quoting the greatest movie ever is way high in my book.
morzer
@geg6:
Councillor, you are speaking for the defense, yes, yes?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Chad N Freude: I only steal from Keebler elves, the smug little bastards. They know why.
As for misrepresenting people, well, read the thread. At the top, we were offered two targets: Glenn Greenwald and Jeffrey Goldberg. Who’d the commentariat decide to attack? Clue: it wasn’t the guy who’s complicit in pushing the Iraq invasion.
mclaren
@AxelFoley:
One of the greatest albums of the 80s. But the 80s had a lot of great albums: Prince’s Sign ‘O the Times, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In the USA, Guns ‘N Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, The Police Synchronicity, The Talking Heads Remain In Light, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms, Joy Division’s Closer, The Pretenders The Pretenders, Peter Gabriel’s So, U2’s The Joshua Tree, AC/DC’s Back In Black, The Thompson Twins’ Into the Gap, Tracy Chapman’s self-titled album, Van Halen’s 1984, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love, Roxy Music’s Avalon, Duran Duran’s Rio, Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ Imperial Bedroom, ZZ Top’s Eliminator, ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, X’s Los Angeles, New Order’s Substance, The Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw and the Cooked, Heart’s 1985 self-titled album, Eno & Fripp’s My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, anything by Larry Fast as Synergy, The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, Prince’s 1999 and Purple Rain, The Cure Pornography, Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, The Bangles’ Different Light, Hall & Oates’ Private Eyes, Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly (arguably the greatest concept album of the 80s), Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required, INXS’s Kick, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless, Metallica’s Master of Puppets, The Smiths’ self-titled album, the Violent Femmes’ self-titled album, Michael Jackson’s Bad, Culture Club’s Colour By Numbers, The Cure’s Disintegration, Ozzy Osbourn’s Blizzard Of Oz, Judas Priest’s British Steel, John Cougar Mellencamp’s Uh-Huh, XTC’s Skylarking, Tina Turner’s Private Dancer, Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy, Billy Idols’ Rebel Yell, Human League’s Dare, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, George Clinton’s Computer Games, Don Henley’s Building the Perfect Beast, Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, Ah Ha’s Headlines and Deadlines, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, Missing Persons’ Spring Session M, Suzanne Vega’s self-titled album, Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual (maybe the single best album of the 80s), The Scorpions’ Love at First Sting, The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels, Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Paul Simon’s Graceland…
…Man, that’s a lotta competition. Thriller is a great album — but is it really better than The Joshua Tree or Appetite For Destruction or So?
Chad N Freude
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: “Misreading” not “misrepresenting”. I apologize for my lack of precision. The history of this blog, stretching back through eons in Internet time, shows naught but disdain for Goldberg. I don’t recall ever seen anything positive about him here.
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
That’s reasonable. I think he was pretty useless on healthcare this summer. Hell, I don’t even read him much anymore.
Well, that doesn’t encompass my objection, was it? I wrote quite plainly, and then demonstrated, that at least in one instance he was outright lying about the procedure surrounding the ACA. Interestingly, this is similar to his gripe with Goldberg except that it is a lot more difficult to prove that Goldberg knew he was wrong when he wrote about Iraq. Now I tend to think Goldberg was outright lying but we know GG was, right? So if Glenn thinks it permanently impugns Goldberg’s character to have mischaracterized the justification for Iraq does that mean that Glenn should not be trusted on future domestic legislative battles? I actually tend to think so but I certainly don’t think that is common.
Why do supposed lefties enjoy smacking the left around so much? If you’re just looking to dump hatred and anger on something, well, there’s still the right-wingers bent on ruining your life. Or, hell, take up watching sports and hate the Yankees or something. Why Greenwald?
I don’t think Glenn gets kicked around a whole lot. I stay out of the civil liberties threads as much as there are any here as I tend to think Obama has failed pretty miserably there (although I think his refusal to push harder is probably politically wise)
As for why people get in arms about GG around here – its not reflexively disagreeing with him because he is more left (the assertion that he is more left than me strikes me as, basically, absurd) its that his advocates here who nearly entirely duplicate the Clinton supporters of 30 months ago insist that he has never been wrong before and then you demonstrate that he has been and *poof* they disappear from the thread.
Corner Stone
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
What should be interesting is to look at not only “who” was attacked but on what subject he was attacked.
mclaren
@Ailuridae:
You know, your criticism about Carcetti is excellent. I wondered about that too. It does sound as if the producers were making a bigger deal of Carcetti’s whiteness than they should have, probably to artificially accentuate the narrative about racism underlying the drug war.
However, Lester was ordered to jerk around doing BS during most of S4, wasn’t he? IIRC, Lester basically got sick and tired of pissing around on wild goose chases in order to juke the stats and make the murder rate look lower than it was and after Freamon noticed the new nails on the row house doors in S4 and then found one body, with that evidence he was able to force the Baltimore PD to open up more boarded-up row houses.
That sounds realistic to me. After all, with McNulty shafted and out in the cold, Lester had to toe the line to avoid getting dumped back in the property room for another 13 years. The only thing that wasn’t realistic is that in the real world, the brass would probably have dumped Freamon back on the beat too for wrecking their crime stats.
Objective Scrutator
Okay, I’ve figured out why I keep going to the moderated or spam filter. Does listing any website do that, or is the one I keep trying to enter on the blacklist?
We must be careful about allowing these two to fornicate. Their unholy union could technically be classified as hot Semite on Anti-Semite action. Tradition holds that marriage is for two opposites; thus, Dick Morris could use that argument and triangulate gay marriage into the law of the land (that is, if the Democrats are intelligent enough to hire him).
I would think that Goldberg could at least stick to mental masturbation, and not slip away into the follies of Onanism. Surely, as one who believes an Israeli theocracy is better than an Islamic or Secularist theocracy, he could remain within acceptable realms and present us his proofs of Iran developing a nuclear program? (Ahmadinejad is NOT a lubricant for Jeff’s mental fantasies.) We cannot let Israel’s seed to be killed by infernal temperatures, and Goldberg’s presentation of the proof is the only way we can stop it.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Chad N Freude: I guess you missed the thread where eemom tried explaining to us rabid haters that Goldberg was making some good points about Iran and doesn’t he deserve a second chance and yadda yadda. I wish I was so lucky as to have missed that.
I’ll concede that Goldberg generally gets no love here. However, he also gets about 1/100th of the seething hateful flak directed toward Greenwald. Why? In part because Glenn comes up more often, sure, but like I said: right here in this thread both men were equally the subject of the top post, yet mocking Glenn and his knob-slobbering fan-bois was all we got for discussion. Why?
Ailuridae
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
What’s interesting about your posting style is that you insert unrelated non-sequitirs to people who make accurate, detailed posts that relay what actually occurred and when they attempt to engage you, you type things like:
What’s most amusing about this post is that there is nothing in it that contradicts what I said.
rather than actually, for once, demonstrating the following to be true:
Honestly, the circumstantial evidence that they didn’t really want it (here, the public option) is overwhelming.
Obviously I inserted the parenthetical. So yeah, anytime you want to make overwhelming case with the circumstantial evidence feel free. I’ve been waiting now while reading the FDL bots make that claim for over a year with nobody even attempting to marshal a cogent argument.
Or you could keep claiming that there were 50 votes for a public option through reconciliation and I can keep pointing you to the whip count(s) that prove you are wrong.
Chad N Freude
@MusicMavens: So how come you’re not talking about jazz? Stan Getz, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Ahmad Jamal, Dave Brubeck, Andre Previn (yes, that Andre Previn), Shelly Manne, Joe Pass, Miles Davis, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Thelonius Monk, … etc., etc., and so forth.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
This sounds deep and conspiratorial. I could care less about Greenwald until he starts up with the Obama worse than Bush bullshit, and his cult members show up flogging his flawed natterings and motive reading as being the true word from the prog Gawds. And 90 percent of the attacks on this thread are coming from GG sockpuppets, where all that was needed for them to pop up was people predicting they would.
Dougj jerked your alls chain and out comes the butthurt over someone who is nearly as meaningless as the Jeff Goldberg’s of the world. but do carry on.
Yaco
@Jrod
If you want to know why people get up in arms about Greenwald around here, this thread is my first choice for a good explanation.
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/03/30/greenwald-responds/
Greenwald may be correct in many of his arguments, but he certainly proved himself an asshole in this response.
mclaren
@RareSanity:
Tubes produce mostly even harmonic distortion when they clip because it’s soft clipping. Transistors clip the waveform hard so it’s odd harmonics. The claim is that even harmonics produce more warmth, but there’s no psychoacoustic evidence to back that up. The psychoacoustic listening tests show people can’t hear distortion even there’s huge amounts of it, and most people can’t hear a difference twixt 256kbit or above mp3s vs WAV files or 24-bit audio WAV files vs 16-bit audio WAV files.
The fantasies and myths and old wives’ tales surrounding high end audio are really a sight to behold. Green marker pens. Freezing CDs to make ’em sound better. Spraying goo on CDs to get rid of “static” that supposedly causes “bit jitter.” Serious wackiness.
Double-blind tests prove people can’t hear the difference between a cheap Marantz integrated amp and $5000 Krell monoblocks. ABX listening tests show people can’t hear a difference between Home Depot zip cord and $300 Monster cable interconnects.
Ailuridae
@mclaren:
However, Lester was ordered to jerk around doing BS during most of S4, wasn’t he? IIRC, Lester basically got sick and tired of pissing around on wild goose chases in order to juke the stats and make the murder rate look lower than it was and after Freamon noticed the new nails on the row house doors in S4 and then found one body, with that evidence he was able to force the Baltimore PD to open up more boarded-up row houses.
Here;s the wiki blurb of Lester from S4 after being turned over from MCU to Homicide:
Out of respect for his shrewd investigative tactics, Rawls transfers Freamon back into the Homicide Unit, where Bunk has been investigating the murder of Stanfield drug dealer Fruit and the disappearance of suspect Curtis “Lex” Anderson. They both recognize that Stanfield likely had Lex killed in retribution, but are unable to find the body anywhere. Freamon further observes that Stanfield is not tied to any murders since the Barksdale Gang War ended, and begins to scour Baltimore for any trace of the bodies he knows must be hidden somewhere.
Herc unwittingly provides Freamon with a key clue, a nail gun he noticed when he pulled over Chris and Snoop. Pryzbylewski (now a teacher) provides second-hand information as to where Lex was killed. While checking abandoned row houses in that immediate area, Freamon notices that one of the doors was nailed in while the others were screwed shut, and realizes that Lex’s body must be in that house. He further concludes that the Stanfield Organization is leaving bodies in row houses all over the City. With the nails identifying which houses are doubling as tombs, more than twenty bodies are found.
So basically he is Bunk’s partner they are trying to solve a murder most likely in the Western and the following things are true:
Carver is working in the Western and has been informed where the bodies are.
Pryz is teaching in the Western and his student Randy, told Carver where the bodies are.
Daniels is supervising the Western, knows Carver to be a good cop.
McNulty is walking a beat in the western knows Bodie etc.
All of these are true and Lester Freamon decides to talk to none of them about the case (or anyone from the Western drug unit) and instead have the cable and sewage workers search in random tunnels. Sorry, that’s fucking crazy and it completely betrays lester and makes him a fucking moop.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: These folks are mostly sycophants that do whatever they think the front pagers want. It really isn’t any more sophisticated than that.
Chad N Freude
Since they’re both Jewish, that would be a difficult classification to justify.
Chad N Freude
@Objective Scrutator: BTW, you’re a bit late with this. See @Chad N Freude.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@eemom:
I’m deep into the caramel corn right now.
/nom nom
Carry on Glendinistas!
Chad N Freude
@Objective Scrutator: For some reason, or no reason, this is in moderation upthread:
Since they’re both Jewish, that would be a difficult classification to justify.
RareSanity
@mclaren:
Yep. That’s why I had quotes around “warmth”.
I think you are agreeing with what I said?
eemom
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
no, I didn’t say that sweetie.
But that’s ok. I don’t expect someone who has to climb to reach the cookie jar to read at a 6th grade level.
Here…..want some popcorn? It’s free!
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Ailuridae:
It seems like a question of whether intent or outcomes are more important. Goldberg was pretty instrumental in making the Iraq invasion seem reasonable to that portion of Middle America that pretend to think about such things, though simply having Bush admin goons put “Iraq” or “Saddam Hussein” in the same sentence as “9/11” every day for a couple months did the heavy lifting in convincing Americans to support the invasion. Greenwald’s effect on the healthcare bill was basically nothing.
Also, I don’t see a problem with disregarding Greenwald when it comes to domestic politics, outside of most civil liberties issues in my own case. I’d say pouring vitriol all over him at every opportunity is excessive, though. (Not accusing you of that.)
In this country, at this time, opposing war and supporting real civil liberties (as opposed to the libertarians who only support the rights of the rich to trample the poor) is the far left position. I won’t disagree that it is absurd, but that’s how it is.
Thanks for the discussion, BTW. I’d nearly forgotten such things could occur here.
eemom
@morzer:
I have no idea what you’re arguing about, but I wuvs you and wanna have your babies. Passionately.
eemom
[munch]
Chad N Freude
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Because the commenters here find Goldberg beyond any hope of redemption no matter how he waves his words, while Greenwald often takes positions we/many/some of us agree with, even though he is sometimes wrong, sometimes intellectually dishonest, and always way too verbose.
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
In this country, at this time, opposing war and supporting real civil liberties (as opposed to the libertarians who only support the rights of the rich to trample the poor) is the far left position. I won’t disagree that it is absurd, but that’s how it is.
Thanks for the discussion, BTW. I’d nearly forgotten such things could occur here.
No problem. To better understand the side that takes issue with Glenn’s supporters control-F the thread and type in El Tiburon. Same shit in basically every thread about Greenwald.
I don’t think anyone making similar posts (and there are several in this thread) would take too kindly to people outright dismissing Glenn’s posting on all domestic issues outside of civil liberties. Do you?
But in short, I think a whole lot of posters here use Glenn as a pit bull against the administration with the implication that if Hillary were President these gross violations of civil liberties would have ceased. That strikes me as a pretty silly claim but its also not something I find particularly engaging or relevant.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck:
Genesis w/ Peter Gabriel? ELP? Rick Wakeman?
Chad N Freude
@eemom: Does your husband know about this? Or is morzer your husband? Or do you have an open marriage (how 60s)?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Ailuridae:
The circumstantial case has been made by Greenwald and others and briefly by myself just a bit upthread. Even Ben Nelson said he was “open” to it. Even Mary Landrieu said she was for it at one point. The time to work with a politician on a desired outcome is five minutes after such a statement, not five months. That is, if you truly want the supposed desired outcome.
Thereafter the trail of facts is well known, even to you. It’s known that a backroom deal was done on pharmaceuticals, and a NYT reporter has been quoted as saying a similar deal went down on the PO. The PO seemed to be thrown a few lifelines during the protracted process, only to have them yanked away. Greenwald, Hamsher, and other grievous enemies of Obotia have blogged on this extensively and I won’t bother recapitulating all of it here, but when I talk about circumstantial evidence that’s more or less what I’m talking about.
You, on the other hand, keep calling Greenwald a liar. What specifically are you talking about?
Chad N Freude
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I think you are mistaking momentary posturing for some political reason for an opportunity to gain support for something.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Chad N Freude:
I did have to laugh at the thought of someone who never admits that they were wrong about something going after someone who was wrong about something.
eemom
@Chad N Freude:
perish the thought! I am unworthy of the 60s, because at some time in my life I was reportedly a hard-ass republican. I have no recollection of this, but “geg6” knows all about it, so ask her.
Also I’m a neocon warmonger and Likudnic who loves it when people on flotillas get shot in the back and wants to go to war not only with Iran, but also Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In that latter respect I am an acolyte of Thomas Friedman. I don’t remember that either, but DougJ has it covered, so ask him. And I’m sure a few others on this thread will happily chime in.
But none of this compares to my pathological love for Jeff Goldberg, as manifested by the fact that I actually read what he wrote in the Atlantic last month. Disgusting, I know…..but what can I say? I sadly lack that unique talent that enables DougJ to know everything about everybody who writes anything which renders it unnecessary and a total waste of time to actually read such thing before opining on it.
I am unworthy……so unworthy. : (
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@eemom: I nearly went Googling to grab some quotes from those threads, but then I remembered that arguing with you is about as fun and useful as volunteering at the RNC phone bank.
You almost got me, though!
@Ailuridae: There’s a difference between dismissing a guy and regularly dumping on him, though. Even if I’ve decided for myself to stop reading the guy, I think he does much more good than ill, therefore any feeling about him that’s more emphatic than dismissal seems like a waste.
IIRC, there hasn’t been much of that notion around since last year. Even so, I’m certain Greenwald would actually be just as hard on Clinton as he is on Obama, since I’m also pretty sure they’d be mostly doing the same things. I have no problem with making fun of PUMAs who think Greenwald is crusading just for them, but since they aren’t posting here that joke went stale a long time ago.
It really seems to me that most of the crapping on Greenwalds and Hamshers and the like is just a watered down continuation of the anti-PUMA crusade that went on here back in 2008. Like methadone to keep a junkie from dying of withdrawal, it takes the edge off but never satisfies.
Ailuridae
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
The circumstantial case has been made by Greenwald and others and briefly by myself just a bit upthread. Even Ben Nelson said he was “open” to it. Even Mary Landrieu said she was for it at one point. The time to work with a politician on a desired outcome is five minutes after such a statement, not five months. That is, if you truly want the supposed desired outcome.
Again, the only person who could find that case overwhelming is someone who started at the conclusion as Glenn did.
The PO seemed to be thrown a few lifelines during the protracted process, only to have them yanked away. Greenwald, Hamsher, and other grievous enemies of Obotia have blogged on this extensively and I won’t bother recapitulating all of it here, but when I talk about circumstantial evidence that’s more or less what I’m talking about
So overwhelming circumstantial evidence to you is the writings of people who intersperse their poorly sourced arguments with outright lies? Oh to be a firebagger.
As for the lie in question re Glenn in my first post I linked a long post of his full or innuendo and baseless conjecture that included this bit:
All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50.
First more and more Democrats were not pressured into signing any letter. You can look here. There was a letter signed by 24 Senators. 19 more said, in some fashion they agreed with the letter to the OL folks or constituents to the satisfaction of the whip counters. 4 more said similarly on video. But you can look at those comments and pretty plainly see that people are not saying “I am in favor of passing the public option through reconciliation” (otherwise they would just sign the letter that clearly stated that, right?)
So support for enactment through the PO was almost indisputably never above 40 and certainly never approached 50 as Glenn claimed it was rapidly doing. And how do we know this? Because the public option had already been whipped before the debate started and it topped out below 45 supporters. To assume that after a long, hard fight people who didn’t support it initially (15 members of the Democratic caucus) would support it using reconciliation in greater numbers flies in the face of basic reasoning.
There were only 50 votes when it was part of a larger bill. I’ve mentioned this before but Evan Bayh had no interest in the public option and almost certainly no interest in a Medicaid expansion. But he was willing to vote for them to get it done
Sometimes I honestly wonder about the gullibility of Hamsher’s acolytes. Jane can’t even remotely describe the problems that drive our outrageous health care costs. In many years of reading everything FDL wrote on HCR and continuing on through her paid advocates at GOS none of them has had the courage to state plainly the actual reason for outrageous health care costs. Instead they want to focus on admittedly unnecessary middlemen around the periphery. I tend not to trust people to solve problems who don’t actually understand the problem.
eemom
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Hell, you aren’t even a cookie thief. Just a chickenshit.
Chad N Freude
@eemom: Well, your credentials are impressive. Please leave your name with the receptionist and we’ll call you when we need a right-wing punching bag.
I haven’t followed your … um … conversations with other commenters, but perhaps the way you express yourself is misleading. Think JayB, a role model for not getting the kind of dialogue one would like to have. Or maybe not; perverse provocation can be very rewarding.
And now I bid all the commenters on this thread a Good Night and a very happy whatever holiday you choose to celebrate at this time of year.
Ailuridae
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
IIRC, there hasn’t been much of that notion around since last year. Even so, I’m certain Greenwald would actually be just as hard on Clinton as he is on Obama, since I’m also pretty sure they’d be mostly doing the same things. I have no problem with making fun of PUMAs who think Greenwald is crusading just for them, but since they aren’t posting here that joke went stale a long time ago.
Sorry, but a lot of the people trumpeting GG’s critiques of the administration were indeed loud Hillary supporters on this blog. And a lot of their tone, despite evidence that HRC wouldn’t have made different decisions is very much “I told you so!”
I don’t really have a dog in this fight; I was a Biden guy despite knowing he wouldn’t make my state’s ballot. After that I just fell in line as a D.
And, at least, in my case I don’t equate Jane with Glenn. Jane is a huckster and an intellectual lightweight. Glenn is neither. He’s just in bed with her for reasons all his own.
Objective Scrutator
If one is a self-hating Jew, such as Greenwald, we should make the distinction between them and a non-self hating Jew such as Goldberg. It would be like calling Obot-on-Firebagger action (or Firebagger-on-Obot action, for those picky on semantics) liberal-on-liberal action. Technically true, but collectively nonsense.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@eemom: You’re right. To slog through your old bullshit requires courage I don’t have. I’m not going to risk my mental health like that just to prove how big my nuts are.
Well, how big my single nut is. I lost the other one to cancer. Facing that was easy compared to reading your ouvre.
I’m off to take a stroll through my ghetto neighborhood. Much safer than reading your backlogs.
John Bird
Bzzzt. It’s not silly to criticize someone who helped lie us into a costly war when he attempts to do it again and is allowed to retain his status as a Serious Journalist, even if his wet dream is unlikely to happen while he’s awake. Because what’s actually being criticized, as Greenwald has noted time and time again, is the media machine that still considers Jeff Goldberg to be an authority above Scott Ritter on Middle East proliferation – after the Bush Administration itself admitted that last time that question was, ahem, pertinent to our military, Ritter was totally right and Goldberg was full of shit.
Goldberg should be allowed to make his crazy predictions from a milk crate on the street corner. He shouldn’t be allowed by the Atlantic Monthly to present them on a platform that professes to enlighten the policymakers of America.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Ailuridae:
I really don’t see that, but it’s subjective. Maybe we’re both overestimating the frequency of the posts that annoy us.
Anyway, thanks again for the responses.
mclaren
@Chad N Freude:
Fareed Zakaria is lying about his involvement in fomenting the Iraq invasion. Zakaria’s claim that he “thought it was a brainstorming session” was passed by other participants, including Fouad Ajami and Wolfowitz. They deny Zakaria’s claim outright and say Zakaria was one of the most rabid warmongers at that table, pounding the table for invasion.
Zakaria changed his tune only after Dubya’s Excellent Adventure in Mesopotamia went off the rails in 2005. You can’t find significant criticism by Zakaria of the Iraq quagmire prior to 2005, at least, not in the first 100 or so links on google.
Tom Friedman has tried to whitewash and erase his past boosterism of the Iraq invasion too, by the way. On 13 September 2001, Friedman wrote an hysterical foaming-at-the-mouth column in which he shrieked “Does my country really understand that this is World War III?”
Source: Tom Friedman, New York Times op-ed September 13 2001, “Foreign Affairs; World War III.”
You won’t find any references by Tom Friedman to his 2001-2005 over-the-top insanity except a vague mealy-mouthed admission that “after 9/11, I overreacted.” Gee…ya think? World III? Overreaction? Really? Ya, kinda, guy.
Zakaria appears to have thoroughly laundered his background of warmongering too. He now says only that he was “in favor of” the Iraq invasion “at first,” not that Zakaria helped foment and plan it. You won’t hear anything about how Zakaria pounded the table in that November meeting and vehemently urged the other participants to “take Saddam out” and “drain the swamp in the Middle East.” Both Friedman and Zakaria probably have interns assigned to do nothing but scour the web for incriminating cites of their warmongering from 2001-2005 and then issue bogus DMCAs to erase ’em from the net.
John Bird
@mclaren:
Friedman, Zakaria, and pretty much the entire media. Why don’t they remember anything that happened more than a couple years ago? Because if you go back and look at news archives up to 2005, you see all the same Serious People as in your latest newsweekly, saying and repeating things for years, and years, and years that they couldn’t possibly have investigated or had proof to support, because it turns out, there wasn’t any proof to begin with.
mclaren
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Well…opposing pointless unwinnable wars of aggression started for no reason is a far-left position now. Also, I’d put it thus: “supporting the constitution of the united states is the far-left position.”
The constitution says no torture (amendment 8), defendants must be arraigned (charges) and get due process when arrested (amendment 5), accused has a right to a speedy trial (amendment 6) and can’t be murdered by executive order just because somebody doesn’t like hi/r (amendments 5, 6, 14).
Supporting those provisions of the constitution is now a fringe DFH far-left kooky-hahahaha-looka-the-crazy-radical-lefty position on the political spectrum. Supporting the
killing of the professors and Year Zero relocations and torture centers as dictated by Pol Potkilling of people identified as alleged terrorists by JSOC assassination teams and preventive detentions (AKA kidnapping without charges) and enhanced interrogation of U.S. citizens as ordered by the president, is now the default centrist position in American politics.Incidentally, I’m not opposed to war per se. If Iran sent a fleet of bombers over and pounded Baltimore into rubble, I’d say, sure, let’s invade Iran and flatten it. Fact is, Iran will never do that. They don’t have the capability. There are no countries on earth that could even try to do that, except Mexico and Canada…and y’know, I’m not trembling in my bed in terror of the rapacious hordes of deadly Mexicans or the fearsome squadrons of Canadian buccaneers chomping at the bit to sweep down from Saskatchewan and annihilate everything in their path.
mclaren
@Ailuridae:
.
Here’s where we disagree. One of the big themes of The Wire is the way people don’t ask the right questions. Lots of missed connections. “If only…” People who know things sail right past other people who need to know ’em and nobody puts 2 + 2 together until long long afterwards.
That seems realistic to me.
A guy like Lester Freamon taking umpty-ump weeks to finally figure out what shoudl’ve been staring him in the face, and nobody from the students in Pryz’s school to Carver at the Western district, telling him the important info, sounds right. Lester is the kinda guy who probably wouldn’t ask. He would figure he’s smarter than everyone else in the room, he can figure it out, he’s on the down-low, he’s got it covered. So he misses out on the important clues.
I buy that. It sounds like real life. Then some dumb accident, like noticing the screws in the boarded up row house doors, breaks the case. Yeah, that’s the way it usually does happen in real life. Really really smart people don’t figure out obvious things because… Because of: bureaucracy, turf wars, ego, “I thought everybody knew that,” that kind of thing. Sounds credible. Making a murder case is really hard. Even for Lester, even when his mojo is cranking.
So we’re going to have to agree to disagree about Lester in S4.
wilfred
@mclaren:
Concise and astute.
Glenn gets flamed because he criticizes Democrats as much as Republicans; instead of marching along with the Manichean, we’re good/they’re bad, death struggle of this blog and others. He’s an equal opportunity hypocrite exposer, and the closest thing to a real muckraker that exists on the internet.
If he increased his “SarahPalinisastupidc**t” blogging to, say, 2 a week, he’d be liked, like way more.
N44x
Goldberg is a Jewish ultra-nationalist and all his opinions are colored by his fanatic love for Israel. His attempt to repeat his Iraq warmongering performance with the advocacy of war with Iran shows a lot of chutzpah on his part.
MBunge
“the closest thing to a real muckraker that exists on the internet.”
And like all real muckrakers, Greenwald can get a bit monomanical and turn disputes over facts and analysis into contests of righteousness.
Mike
El Tiburon
@Ailuridae:
And of course what he really wrote:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/12/democrats
So you were wrong, but even so, you were quibbling and ignoring the entire thesis of his post, which is how the Democrats got out of even working for a public option.
El Tiburon
@AxelFoley:
It was actually with DougJ after DougJ posted about the PAC GG runs with Hamsher. And like all threads that involve GG, none of the criticisms had any (or very little) merit. And it was DougJ who had to answer to the critics much more than GG.
Here is the first sentence from the DKos post:
Nice. Again, say what you will, but to assert GG has “near-zero intellectual prowess” is dumbfuckery. I doubt you even read this, probably just googled “Greenwald+wrong” and this popped up.
Oh, and here is the title of this post:
Unhinged? Nice right-wing rhetoric. Otherwise, there is NOTHING in this DKos post that proves GG’s assertions are incorrect. It is simply one person disagreeing with GG.
Disagree all the fuck you want, call him an asshole all you want, I could give two squirts. But I’ve yet to see any real criticisms of GG, especially on the content and factual information of his posts.
FlipYrWhig
Greenwald gets factual information right, pretty reliably. His interpretation of the significance of that factual information can take the express train to Crazytown, and he is completely shut to alternative interpretations. Like Matt Yglesias, he basically figures that he can out-reason anybody, which means he must be right on everything, immediately. I prefer pundits, and people, who occasionally admit there might be other conclusions to draw from the facts in evidence.
Commenters here had a conniption about E.D. Kain’s refusal to dialogue; but Greenwald doesn’t dialogue either. He might engage in the psuedo-dialogue of coming by and throwing down, but he doesn’t think he needs to listen, because he already told you that he’s right, and there’s nothing else to say but the same thing, harder and louder.
My beef with Greenwald is not about “factual information,” and not about ideology either. It’s about openness and give-and-take, which Greenwald IMHO doesn’t see a need to practice.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Ailuridae:
Not surprisingly, there is no substance here to respond to. Just puling over and over again that other people are liars does nothing but make you look pathetic. If you’ve got something better than schoolyard repetitions of “liar, liar” please present it. If you’ve got a useful whip count of those senators who swore they would never vote for a PO under any circumstance please present it. Otherwise you’re just wasting our time.
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
What complete and total bullshit. I am amazed the Greenwald interacts as much as he does. It is obvious he reads damn near every comment and will engage those worth engaging.
Do you want him to ask how everyone’s kids are doing in school?
Most of his responses to commenters are the variety where the commenter misquoted Greenwald to make him say something he did not.
But I guess according to you, if someone points out you are wrong, and THEY are wrong, you just let it go and move on.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: He interacts, but he doesn’t listen. If you disagree with him, it means that you’ve been duped. So, sure, he fires when fired upon, and that might look like an exchange, but he _never_ considers alternatives. It’s beneath him to reconsider what he already has told you he thinks.
Classic Greenwald is to lay out the facts, draw a conclusion, and then pretend that disputing the conclusion is disputing the facts; and that’s on a good day. The Greenwald we have seen around here lays out facts, draws conclusions, and then when his conclusions are disputed he says he’s being attacked for telling uncomfortable truths. It _never_ occurs to him that his conclusions exceed his facts, or that he’s getting ahead of himself — or, if it does, he never admits it. _That’s_ bullshit.
I don’t mean the “tell me about your involvement in the Jane Hamsher PAC” stuff. I mean the “Obama was only ever pretending to support the public option” stuff, which ricocheted into a larger dust-up about reasoning via guilt-by-association networks. Any time he pulls the “The only possible conclusion is that…” maneuver, all his worst tendencies come flowing out.
That’s what bugs me about the guy. He doesn’t really understand that if someone isn’t convinced by his argument, it might not _necessarily_ mean that his interlocutor is a coward, moron, or cultist.
MBunge
“Most of his responses to commenters are the variety where the commenter misquoted Greenwald to make him say something he did not.”
What you’re describing is often Greenwald arbitrarily defining the terms of discussion so that it’s impossible for him to be wrong.
Mike
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
What I find so fascinating and appealing about Greenwald is that he obviously goes to extreme lengths in his research. Also, his analytical skills, IMHO, are some of the best I have ever seen. So by the time he hits the PUBLISH button, I think he has looked at every angle and considered every alternative.
So using your example about “Obama never considering the PO’. well, what other alternative is there to consider? The one Obama and some democrats want you to consider? After Greenwald made his case, I could see it in no other way.
Please. I doubt Greenwald cares one way or another what anyone thinks of his conclusions. But he cares deeply (as do I) when someone uses misquotes or fabricates something he wrote to disprove his conclusions.
So if a commenter wrote something like, “Gee Glenn, I just don’t agree with your conclusion and think you are way off base” I think Glen would ignore it. To each their own.
But if a commenter (or Goldberg) completely fabricates something (Greenwald retracted that statement) or grossly misquoted Greenwald (Hey Glenn, why are you such a big Ron Paul supporter??) then he will reply that 1. he did not retract any statement or 2. He is not nor has he ever been a Ron Paul supporter. (He clearly has pointed out that Ron Paul has some good policy ideas, especially with regards to stupid wars, etc.)
So again, I could care less if anyone on this board likes or dislikes Greenwald. But when people continue to distort the truth, then I will do my best to correct the record.
El Tiburon
@MBunge:
No, what I’m describing is where Greenwald said “X”
Then Joe the Commenter says that Greenwald said “Y”
Then Greenwald comes back and says, “No JTC, I did not say “Y”, I said “X”. It’s right there, I said “X”. So stop fabricating things that I said to help make your argument.”
Why is this so difficult?
MBunge
“No, what I’m describing is where Greenwald said “X”
Then Joe the Commenter says that Greenwald said “Y”
Then Greenwald comes back and says, “No JTC, I did not say “Y”, I said “X”. It’s right there, I said “X”. So stop fabricating things that I said to help make your argument.””
Example, please.
Mike
MBunge
“After Greenwald made his case, I could see it in no other way.”
But it’s the OTHER guys who are cultists.
Mike
MBunge
Scratch that comment at 207. You’re obviously referring to Golberg, which is exactly what you described.
That’s not the way every interaction The Last Honest Man goes, though.
Mike
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
Exactly. That’s the entire fucking PROBLEM. You confirmed it: Greenwald assembles facts, draws conclusions from them, and ignores anyone’s suggestion that other conclusions could be drawn, because he’s smarter and braver than anyone else.
Much more likely is this:
Greenwald says X.
Greenwald says, because of X, Y.
Commenter says, I disagree about Y.
Greenwald says, I already explained this: X.
Commenter says, No, that’s not the point. X doesn’t mean Y.
Greenwald says, You keep denying that X means Y because you love Dear Leader.
Commenter says, Greenwald is a giant throbbing pen1s.
Greenwald defender says, Why does Greenwald get under people’s skins so much? After all, he was totally right about X.
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
The entire problem is Greenwald doesn’t respond to everyone who disagrees with him? Who the fuck does? Cole? DougJ? Come on. He doesn’t have to respond to anyone, but he does respond – a lot.
Generally he responds to those with very specific arguments or fabrications. What is there to respond to if someone simply says, “I think you are wrong.” There is nothing to respond to.
Otherwise the rest of your algebra experiment is poppy-cock and rubbish and is arbitrary and capricious.
I read Greenwald as religiously as I read Balloon Juice and you are simply wrong with your characterization.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
fwiw — which is not much around here — I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comment from you that wasn’t spot-the-fuck-on, and imo you have outdone yourself with this one.
That, ladies and gentleman, is the essence of Greenwaldian Dialectic.
El Tiburon
@eemom:
cultist.
And.
Splitter.
eemom
@El Tiburon:
hear that Flip? You’re “Dear Leader” now!
I actually don’t know what a “splitter” is, however.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Cat Lady:
> but why is it so easy to get his fanbois to think that
> anything short of tongue bathing his every word is all
> about that? It’s just really fucking weird.
Scat Lady, all I said was that you had a little mustache and a German-Austrian accent… I can’t imagine how your fellow balloonbaggers made up all those Hitler comparisons out of thin air… It’s just really fucking weird, isn’t it?
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
Come on, stop playing word games. I’ve said repeatedly what the problem is: he jumps to unwarranted conclusions and refuses to re-examine why he made them. He seems to think that because he can command facts and because he’s indefatigable — both of which are admirable qualities — anything he builds upon those facts and with that persistence _must be correct_. I stopped reading him a while ago because he wears me out, but I don’t remember him ever saying something like, “You have a point there” or “Hmm, I hadn’t considered that.” You follow him more closely than I do: has he ever posted on something, then reconsidered it? I think that’s a problem.
My day job is teaching. There are things I’ve taught time and time again, and then one day a student will mention something I’ve never noticed, and I think, “Hey, cool.” I don’t think Glenn Greenwald is open to that experience. That’s what I mean about dialogue. He is happy to interact with people who see things differently, but he wants to defeat them all. He already took care of it, and the answer is what he said it was, and the time for debating has expired. That’s pretty insufferable.
(So is Jeffrey Goldberg, FWIW)
ETA: Thx, eemom. I spend too much time writing here and too little on projects that I should be doing, so it’s nice to know that someone is actually reading this stuff.