Patterico's Pontifications

7/12/2006

Rather: I Stand by the Rathergate Story

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:40 pm



According to Allah, Dan Rather still stands by the long-since-discredited Rathergate story.

Still.

More Greenwald Dishonesty

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:32 pm



So, was Greenwald’s post on right-wingers not condemning Misha irony? Or serious?

Turns out he is saying both. He’s just hoping we aren’t paying attention.

Over at Q&O, Jon Henke says Greenwald was being ironic. In other words, he was simply making fun of right-wingers who make the “silence equals assent” argument:

It was not a serious suggestion that the Right has an obligation to denounce any incidence of that kind of rhetoric; it was a response to the recent suggestion from some Right wing bloggers that the Left had been remiss in not denouncing an obscure blogger for obscene rhetoric. Goose, gander.

On the same blog, McQ says Greenwald is being serious. McQ says Greenwald really was condemning righties for failing to condemn Misha.

Greenwald has agreed with Henke, saying he was being ironic. As quoted by McQ in an update to McQ’s post, Greenwald said:

I was just about to explain that McQ missed the entire point of the post – the point was not to impose an obligation for bloggers to condemn every vile comment that comes along. To the contrary, I was objecting to complaints made by numerous right-wing bloggers this weekend that “the Left” did not condemn Frisch’s reprehensible though irrelevant remarks with sufficient vigor and frequency and that this somehow means that they must approve of the tactics.

In other words, he was being ironic.

So Greenwald says he didn’t mean to require right-wingers to condemn every vile comment that comes along. Ooookay . . . except that he said the exact opposite in a comment to my post this morning:

You certainly were vigilant in railing against those irr[e]levancies, even though you’re way too busy to notice or condemn any of the far more significant, vile rhetoric pouring forth regularly from the higher echelons on the Right — a glaring inconsistency which, incidentally, was the principal point of my post.

In other words, he was being serious.

Ironic? Serious? Serious? Ironic?

Depends on where you look.

I highlighted that last quote in an earlier post for a different reason: to show that he lied or was inexcusably sloppy in accusing me of failing to condemn outrageous statements on the right.

But now I want you to look at something different. Compare the bolded language in the last two block quotes.

Can they be reconciled? I think not. In one, he says he was not trying to condemn the right for failing to condemn Misha. In another, he says he was.

I think he’s talking out of both sides of his ass. But you be the judge.

The Difference Between Me and Glenn Greenwald

Filed under: General,Morons — Patterico @ 8:03 pm



Well, there are a few. But here’s one that leaps to mind.

To whom do I turn for authoritative news and commentary? Well, I look to a mixture of media outlets and reputable blogs.

And to whom does Constitutional Scholar Glenn Greenwald turn?

Well, if this post is any indication, that would be a guy calling himself “Retardo Montalban.”

So that’s a difference right there.

UPDATE: A commenter asks: “Lastly, what makes your pseudonym so much better than Retardo’s?” Hmmm. There may be similarities there. My pseudonym is a nickname my Dad used to call me when I was a kid. True story.

Is Glenn Greenwald a Liar? Or Is He Just Someone Who Makes Confident Assertions of Fact without Having the Slightest Clue Whether They Are True?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:56 pm



It’s time for Glenn Greenwald to retract, and apologize for, a flat-out misstatement about me he made this morning.

Here’s Greenwald, this morning, on my blog, speaking to me:

Your “day job” didn’t seem to prevent you from spewing all sorts of moralizing and self-righteous condemnations over the Evil of The Deb Frisch Comments.

. . . .

You certainly were vigilant in railing against those irr[e]levancies, even though you’re way too busy to notice or condemn any of the far more significant, vile rhetoric pouring forth regularly from the higher echelons on the Right — a glaring inconsistency which, incidentally, was the principal point of my post.

This is a flat-out falsehood. And the only question is whether it’s a knowing lie, or whether Greenwald just popped off with this assertion without having the slightest idea whether it was true.

Let’s roll the tape, shall we?

Clearly, the most prominent obnoxious conservative loudmouth around these days is Ann Coulter. Regular readers know I have been scathing and relentless in my denunciation of Coulter. The next several quotes are from me, on this blog, about Coulter. I’ll highlight some parts, for emphasis:

We’ll start with this:

Shut up, already, Ann. Just shut up. After your recent remarks joking about assassinating Justice Stevens, dontcha think it’s time to cool the assassination jokes for a while — as in: forever?

Conservatives, it’s our job to call her out on this. This woman has proven herself incapable of engaging in serious discourse without constant “joking” fantasies about violence against government officials. I denounce her comments about assassinating public officials — jokes or no — and I encourage other conservatives to do the same.

and move on to this:

Ann Coulter (whom I have said many times I don’t like) has said yet another stupid thing, using the term “ragheads” to describe certain Muslims.

or this:

My initial impression is that this is about as strong evidence of the repugnance of Ann Coulter as anything I’ve ever read by her.

or this:

I hate it when left-wingers define my beliefs according to some stupid thing Ann Coulter said.

or this, re her “Jersey Girls” comments:

I do not believe these women are immune from criticism. I just think that Coulter’s criticism went way, way over the line — and it’s part of a larger pattern.

or this:

She said the women are “enjoying their husbands’ deaths.” That is venal and nasty.

or this, a post titled “Why I Don’t Like Ann Coulter, Volume 14“:

She is the Ted Rall of the right.

(Hint for Greenwald: that is not a compliment.)

or this:

I have said on many occasions that I do not like Ann Coulter.

Which, I think it’s fair to say, is true.

My rhetoric is not limited to Ann Coulter. I have said:

I am conservative but not doctrinally so: for example, I am pro-gay rights; in favor of a “beyond all possible doubt” standard for death-penalty cases (and am very concerned about innocents on Death Row); anti-Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and other conservatives whose rantings give sensible conservatives a bad name.

That’s not the only time I have whacked O’Reilly. In this post, I called him a “humorless and self-absorbed blowhard.”

In this post, I called conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage a “moron.”

When a general said it was a “hell of a lot of fun to shoot” men in Afghanistan “who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” I took a terrible beating from my commenters for condemning him, saying: “[L]ike it or not, we are waging a public relations war as well as a military war. Comments like this hurt the public relations war badly.”

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Mr. Greenwald, you owe me a big fat apology and a retraction. Try to muster some sincerity when you deliver it, mmmkay?

UPDATE: More dishonesty from Greenwald here.

(See-Dubya) Gotcha, Paracha: SWIFT disrupted Baltimore Bombing

Filed under: General — See Dubya @ 12:59 pm



(a post by guest blogger See-Dubya.)

An excellent, in-depth Vent at Hotair today covers of Riverside County goat-farmer and Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn and the network of terrorists he is involved with—including a plot to blow up a Baltimore gas station.

Two names I recognized from this presentation are the father-and-son terror-finance team of Uzair and Saifullah Paracha, whom I blogged about here. My post pointed out how at least Paracha Junior was caught through SWIFT monitoring, and probably his father as well. At the time, as I noted previously, Paracha’s arrest was attributed to information gleaned from the interrogation of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, in order to prevent disclosure of the true source: SWIFT monitoring.

So: not only were the Parachas financing terror, they were helping terrorist Majid Khan return illegally into the country to carry out the gas station bombing. Paracha Jr. even posed as Khan on the phone to INS and picked up Khan’s mail in Baltimore.

In other words, SWIFT monitoring not only led to the arrests of the five or six terrorists I’ve detailed in my previous post, but if it brought Uzair Paracha to light…

…then SWIFT monitoring disrupted a terrorist attack on the United States.

But the terrorists won’t be so careless next time. Thanks, New York Times!

Cross-posted at Junkyard Blog.

Glenn Greenwald: Douchebag

Filed under: Morons — Patterico @ 12:38 am



Glenn Greenwald is a douchebag. Hold on: I’m about to back up that charge.

Greenwald wrote this post yesterday, noting that Misha of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler had written a post suggesting that five Supreme Court Justices be hung. Then Greenwald says:

But what’s so very confounding is that of all the countless right-wing bloggers who spent the weekend so very horrified about the comments of that influential political leader of liberalism, Deb Frisch, or who lamented that she wasn’t condemned aggressively enough for her idiotic comments to Jeff Goldstein, none of them has condemned these calls by their fellow prominent right-wing blogger for American journalists and Supreme Court justices to be hung by trees until their neck snaps (indeed, one of the right-wing bloggers joining in the weekend sermons against this mean Deb Frisch rhetoric was that Beacon of Right-wing propriety, Misha himself).

He links a bunch of the right-wing bloggers who were disturbed by Frisch’s child threats. I am among them. So now it is “so very confounding” that I haven’t denounced Misha. What possible reason could exist for that?

Gee, I dunno!

Well, for starters: I don’t read the guy. His over-the-top rhetoric has never appealed to me. To understand why, you need look no further than the outrageous, ridiculous post cited by Greenwald.

But there is an even more compelling reason why I failed to condemn Misha. I have a day job. In the few waking hours that Greenwald gave me and others to condemn the guy, I was either getting ready for work, or at work.

Here’s the chronology: Misha’s post was written yesterday in the early morning hours, while I was sleeping. I woke up yesterday morning at 6 a.m., showed, dressed, ate, looked at the computer very briefly, and left for work at 7:15 a.m. I didn’t look at a computer again until about 5:30 p.m. When I got home, Glenn, your post condemning me and others for not condemning Misha was already posted. You had written it hours before, at 2:18 p.m.

I mean, you have got to be kidding me.

Greenwald might have a point if he had waited a couple of days, rather than a couple of hours, and then saved his rhetoric solely for right-wing bloggers who wrote outraged posts asking: “Where are the lefty blogs who condemn Frisch?!” But I am not one of those bloggers. That schtick got old for me when John Cole lambasted the entire right wing for not writing about Terri Schiavo’s autopsy within a couple of hours of its being made public. Once again, I was at work when that happened.

You miss a lot of stuff having a day job. I missed the whole 60 minutes Rathergate thing. I came home and it had all happened, that day, while I was at work.

So I’m sorry, Glenn Greenwald, that in the five minutes I looked at the computer yesterday morning, I didn’t happen across some right-wing site that I never read, and then write a post condemning the post on that site.

You douchebag.

P.S. This is a perfect example of why I don’t read Greenwald. I constantly see dishonest crap by him. Instapundit links to his sleazy posts all the time. In fact, his post on Misha is full of more such dishonest crap (e.g. saying that the “backbone of [the Republican] party” is “the Ann Coulters and James Dobsons and the hate-mongering pundits”), but it’s pointless to respond to all of it.

I have conclusively proven that he is a douche, so that kind of obviates the need to respond to him further.

P.P.S. Since my schedule is so important to Greenwald, let me explain that I was off Monday. Vacation day.

P.P.P.S. Greenwald says a lot of plenty dishonest stuff in the comments. But this one really jumped out at me:

You certainly were vigilant in railing against those irrlevancies, even though you’re way too busy to notice or condemn any of the far more significant, vile rhetoric pouring forth regularly from the higher echelons on the Right — a glaring inconsistency which, incidentally, was the principal point of my post.

This is classic Greenwald: a confident assertion of fact, which is totally false. I have called Bill O’Reilly a “humorless and self-absorbed blowhard” and called Michael Savage a “moron.” I regularly denounce Ann Coulter here, and recently spent days boxing her about the ears for her numerous stupid and violent comments about public officials. There are so many posts I can’t link them all; a few examples here, here, here, here, and here. Regular commenters will tell you there are many more; indeed, they got very frustrated with me for being so obsessed on the topic.

So, Mr. Greenwald, how’s about a retraction and an apology for your unresearched and false accusations about me?

Oh, by the way, some commenters have suggested that he is simply mocking the Right with his “failure-to-denounce” post. But as his repeated comments make clear, he takes this silly failure-to-denounce principle quite seriously.

P.P.P.P.S. Having proven himself to be dishonest, Greenwald is going on the ignore list. I’ll still let him comment here, although if he lies about me again, he may be banned. Meanwhile, I am not getting drawn into a long war with him. I’ve seen others do it and it’s a waste of time. My response to any and all future Greenwald posts is: he’s dishonest; look at this post for evidence; I’m not wasting my time. It was worth it to do one post pointing out what a tool he is; that’s all it’s worth. He’s not worth any more of my time.

UPDATE 7-13-06: A couple of commenters (whose comments I approved after they were held in moderation) have noted that I once praised Misha on this blog — about 2 1/2 years ago, in January 2004. I was surprised to be reminded that I once did read the guy some, but it’s clearly true. Then again, I used to watch Bill O’Reilly on a regular basis, and I now consider him to be a blowhard. Exposure to an annoying schtick will do that to you. I think Glenn Reynolds puts it well about Misha:

I quit reading Misha, the ostensible root cause of this latest kerfuffle, because, although his schtick amused his audience it got old for me fast. (And ironically, I think Misha still blasts me for being too sympathetic to the ACLU.) Greenwald’s not much different, he’s just more earnest, and not funny.

That is basically exactly how I feel. The poo-flinging monkeys are jumping up and down, making monkey noises, and pointing. They think they have scored quite a point. Well, they are welcome to scour my blog for evidence that I have regularly read Misha over the past 2 1/2 years. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald just got through linking a guy named “Retardo Montalban” as providing evidence for something. Sorry guys. I win this round — big-time.

P.S. A commenter claims that I removed his comment with the ever-so-damning link to my former praise. This turns the truth on its head. I came home, found the comments in the moderation folder, and approved them. Were they previously up and then somehow automatically removed by the spam filter? I don’t know. It’s possible — I have been having major problems with comments lately. As I said the other day, before these accusations were made, my spam filter “even nuked some comments that had already been posted, even though I hadn’t done a thing to prompt that.” I thought that the problem was that particular spam filter, but apparently the other filter is doing the same thing. Not my doing, and it’s a dirty lie to say so.

Those who know me will accept this; poo-flinging monkeys won’t. That’s how these things work. You guys can go back to your hero “Retardo” now.


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