Eye on Winer

One of Dave’s oft-used canards is that he’s an Independent, not a Democrat. He claims this whenever it’s convenient — basically when he thinks it makes him more credible on a particular issue. After all, a Democrat might skew or exaggerate, but he’s an independent, right?

Yeah, right. Nobody really buys it, except maybe Dave himself. He clamors for respectful debate, but that seems to only apply to people who aren’t Republicans, which should really tell you everything you need to know about his alleged independence, but today’s post about McCain’s potential Vice-presidential pick really does away with any pretense (emphasis supplied):

I hope he chooses Lieberman — I think he’d be the easiest to run against. I don’t see too many Republicans going for him, and no one wants a traitor a heartbeat from the Presidency . . .

A traitor to whom, exactly? A true independent welcomes the idea of politicians who make their decisions based on ideas and ideals rather than party affiliation. I think both Democrats and Republicans can agree that there’s not a huge gap, practically speaking, between McCain and Lieberman… so, really, who’s being betrayed?

Simple: partisan Democrats and nobody else. No wonder Dave feels the way he does.

WE’RE HAPPY, DAMNIT! Who’s he trying to convince, us or himself? Actually, because Dave projects his every emotion onto the world, all this really means is that he’s happy and at the DNC. There could be fist-fights in the street and he’d still be saying everyone is happy.

In other news, via anonymous tip, Dave claims, in the comments to this post to have donated $1,000 to Obama’s campaign but neither OpenSecrets nor the FEC has heard of him. The reporting minimum is $200 in aggregate (2 U.S.C. 434), so even though Dave claims to have made ten $100 donations, he should still be showing up on these lists.

That is, if he’s actually donated anything. It would be a silly thing to lie about, but what’s the reasonable explanation?

Dave’s about 25% right in his post today about our progress in Iraq. He writes:

There is no such thing as winning an occupation. You either continue to occupy or withdraw. It’s semantic nonsense to apply the verb “win” to the noun “occupation.”

Winning in war or sport is not vague or ill-defined. When the clock runs out in football the team that’s ahead wins. When two runners are in a race the first to cross the finish line wins. When you fight a war, when you take the other guys’ capital and disband their government and army, that’s winning.

The words are correct, but they don’t mean what he thinks they mean. Just because you can’t “win” an occupation doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between withdrawing now or withdrawing later. There are plenty of differences. All other things being equal, for example, you’d rather withdraw now than later. I’m sure Dave would agree with that.

The problem, though, is that all other things aren’t equal. You can even talk about what those things might be without having to debate time-tables. For example, when deciding whether to stay or go, you’d want to know whether the current government is viable. Will it sink or will it swim? Does it matter to us one way or another?

You might be careful to consider who is going to fill any power-vacuums that might arise when the most potent military in the world heads back home. Not just on the national scale, but in that region of the world as well as the various provinces and cities within that country.

When people talk about “winning” in Iraq, they’re being lazy with their English, but the sentiment is not as bizarre as the words are. There are places along the time-line at which withdrawal would be disastrous. The debate isn’t how soon we want to come home — this isn’t vacation — the debate is about when would be the optimal time to withdraw.

Dave seems to be implying, as many on the left are wont to do, that we should get out right now, no questions asked. It’s a debate for another time and place, but one there’s one thing that’s indisputable: that you can’t “win” an occupation does not mean that one time to leave is as good as any other.

Dave Winer’s declaration that no one has the right to judge Rev. Wright provoked this exchange in his comments with a blogger named Marco:

Marco 18 hours ago

It will be hard to believe but this is not meant to be a shrill attack.

Posts like these are jarring in their inconsistency. I fully understand your point on Rev Wright and even sympathize with your position.

What I don’t understand is why you can’t see the hypocrisy in wanting to extend individuals like Rev Wright every possible explanation for their words or actions (”He was alienated”, “He was caught in a position non of us have ever been in”) but when someone you disagree with politically is automatically an evil person and each misstatement is borne of the most nefarious motives.

Its insulting to see you constantly deride others for sweeping generalizations and oversimplification of issues only to have you follow up with a string of posts casting sweeping dispersions and attacks based on 3 seconds sound bites addressing unbelievably complex topics.

I appreciate the perspective you bring which is why I haven’t yet unplugged from your feed but it would be great to see just a little of the balance you want to see in our political process displayed in your posts.

dave 17 hours ago

It’s pretty simple, I say what I have to say and it’s a function of what happens in the world. So when things change, my point of view may change too. If you disagree, go ahead and disagree. But all these charged words, hypocrisy, insulting, deride, attacks, etc — sorry, that’s your mind playing tricks on you. I’m none of those things. Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of) through, but this time I wanted to restate this, that I’ve said many times before. My blog is my space to say what I think. You don’t have to agree, and if you want to, start your own blog to say what you have to say. That’s where comments like yours (above) belong, not here.

dave 17 hours ago

See how much space it takes to clear up your mess. But now that it’s clear I can answer your question.

BECAUSE MY MIND WORKS DIFFERENTLY FROM YOURS.

Which is so obvious it doesn’t even need to be said. All our minds work differently, we were all raised in different environments with different values. To say basically that I should see everything the same way you do is a waste of bandwidth. It’s ridiculous. It’ll never happen nor should it ever happen.

Marco 17 hours ago

That’s not even remotely my point.

Do you really think I would be interested in engaging you or anyone else who did not agree with my world view if that was what I believed? Of course not.

Your response is a wonderful defense of your desire to remain ideologically isolated. “I see things the way I see things and I have no need to try and understand your position” is a great way to stifle true debate and a horrible way to effectively change the way we approach issues in this country. As I said before - it wouldn’t matter to me if you wouldn’t insist on standing on your soapbox and donning sackcloth and ashes to mourn the death of honest debate.

dave 17 hours ago

Okay you get the last word, the rest of it, if there is more — in your space.

Marco, like every well-intentioned person who responds to Winer, hasn’t learned yet that he can’t handle criticism. Winer’s statement, “Usually I don’t let comments that require defensive responses (or else I admit to all the BS you accuse me of),” is one of the clearest explanations he’s ever given that explains why: He thinks that if he doesn’t delete critical comments, it means they are true.

Open and honest dialogue is not possible on any forum that Winer controls.

Today Dave compared the media’s handling of the Karla Faye Tucker case to their handling of Rev. Wright. In so many ways, the comparison could not be any more appropriate.

Dave’s logic on Rev. Wright goes like this: people were attacking Obama with clips from this pastor. Because Obama is “good”, Wright must also be good. Because he’s good, those clips must be “taken out of context” and the reports about them misleading. Because Wright was kind and human during a TV interview (that he did specifically to try to help Obama), that proves he’s good.

(more…)

Dave linked, via Twitter, to a blog post by Marc Canter encouraging us to boycott Google because they had the temerity to… *gasp* …sell their services to those nasty, nasty republicans.

Heh.

It might be the silliest thing I’ve ever read on Canter’s blog. In the next post, blames his mistakes on those nasty, nasty Republicans. I mean, really, if Marc had read as far as the second paragraph he would’ve realized what was going on:

As Official Innovation Provider, Google Inc. will enhance the GOP’s online presence with new applications, search tools, and interactive video. In addition, Google will help generate buzz and excitement in advance of the convention through its proven online marketing techniques.

While I wouldn’t put spinning trivial things past either of the parties (aside: how anyone can see enough difference between them to identify with one and hate the other is beyond me.), this press release sounds like the kind any business would use for the same kind of “event”. It’s not “lying”, it’s some young republican staffer with an MBA putting it to good use.

I wonder if Dave will write a post about how those nasty, nasty Republicans are at it again.

In other news… Dave is going to be announcing a “brilliant” (he says so himself) new use RSS tomorrow. I really hope it’s a contraption I can attach to the hind-quarters of my dog that updates an RSS feed every time he has a bowel movement… following him around the yard is getting kinda old.

As one might expect, Dave wrote another post about health care today, and it’s really outstanding.

It’s direct, it’s respectful of those who disagree, and it focuses rather than obfuscates the issue.

I still don’t agree with him, but this is the direction the discourse in this country needs to go.

Excellent post, Dave.

More of Dave’s “empathy”:

if you have a heart, and think about it, I don’t see how anyone could be against universal health care and still sleep at night.

Allow me to spill some knowledge on Mr. Winer.

First, it must be said that I am personally in favor of government-funded health care for children. They don’t have a choice in the matter, so we need to protect them from their parent’s poor choices.

There are at least three very reasonable arguments against “universal” health care.

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Dave Winer on Twitter today:

davewiner: One of the reasons I am so angered by Jorn Barger’s annointing as the leader of the blogging movement is that he’s an anti-semite. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: Being against a race is anti-blogging, imho, which is about inclusion not spreading hate. I wonder if the people who promote him know this. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: To take something so good and apply it to such a bad purpose is tragic. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: Jorn blames jews for lots of stuff we’re not to blame for. Pretty classic race hate, the stuff we’ve been dealing with for hundreds of years about 1 hour ago

davewiner: @eastgate, ask NPR or the BBC, or other MSM outlets. They’re careful to say he coined the name, but I doubt if many catch the subtlety. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: Look, I don’t care if Barger uses his blog to spread hate. I object to the idea that I am following him somehow. It’s the other way around. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: The jew-hater is using the medium pioneered by a jew. How about that for irony. Missed totally by the MSM people because they’re lazy, imho. about 1 hour ago

davewiner: @krisguy, i didn’t say anthing about this for ten years. the msm ought to know who they’re promoting. obviously they haven’t read his blog. about 1 hour ago

Winer’s going deep into the wayback machine for this attack, referring to a scandal that arose in 2000 when Barger used the following two headlines on news stories about events in Israel and Palestine: “Is Judaism simply a religion of lawless racists?” followed by “Are Jews incapable of polite discourse? (Was: Response to my critics).” As the second headline demonstrates, a lot of people were mad as hell at Barger over the first headline.

None of this changes the fact that Barger coined the term weblog.

For someone who plays the anti-Semite card as hard as Winer, it’s interesting how he’s blogged about the same subject:

• Jan. 21, 2007: “I don’t know what it is about Jews, but when it comes to Israel they lose all sense of perspective. Do they think the Palestinians are entitled to a point of view? Imagine for a moment if you were a Palestinian. Might the treatment you’ve received by Israel feel just a bit like apartheid? … I was raised to think Jews are smarter than everyone else, but when it comes to Israel, we’re pretty damned thoughtless.”
• April 21, 2000: “When I was a kid, being Jewish was something dirty, to be ashamed of. I can’t say exactly how I came to this opinion, perhaps there is no reason why. I always hated how smelly and personal Jews were.”
• Aug. 1, 2006: “I know I’m going to catch hell for this, but it’s time to say something. Israel is wrong. There aren’t two sides to this anymore. … There are hundreds of millions of lives at stake in the Middle East, and this time not only has an Arab country, and that’s what Hezbollah is, withstood Israel’s attack, but they’re also clearly justified in their response to the Israeli attack.”

So Winer’s been an outspoken critic of Jews and Israel in the past, even to the point of speaking up for Hezbollah. As a Jew his criticism comes from a different place, but if you put his words in the mouth of a gentile, that person would be called a Jew hater.

Here’s where it gets weird. After Barger posed the questions that will forever tar him as an anti-Semite, Winer defended him: “I’m glad that Jorn Barger, who’s not Jewish (apparently) asked these questions. It’s reasonable to want to know if there’s a difference between being Jewish and being from Israel.”

Oy vey.

I’m not sure I follow the ‘logic’ of this post:

Bush and Cheney knew what was going to be in the NIE for months. That’s not a stretch. It’s completely unbelievable that they didn’t ask or weren’t told what was coming.

Alright, so another barely coherent political rant is incoming… let’s see what we’ve got:

Hoping to rush us to war. Then the NIE would come out and they’d say that no one knew that there was no nuclear program in Iran.

The only question is why they didn’t start the bombing.

Could it be that they gave the order and the military didn’t do it?

Okay, so ignoring the typical tactic of political argumentation: assume a premise that suits your case, assume that’s the only possibility, and then progress to your soapbox — we have this: the heads of the military ignored an order from the President because they didn’t feel like doing it.

Uh, what?

Oh, sure, if you’re a civilian this could work. Your boss tells you to do something and you don’t like it, so you decide to just ignore it. Happens all the time. Consequences range from nothing to losing your job (one that you probably didn’t like anyway). But we’re not talking about Userland, here, we’re talking about the military. Things aren’t quite so simple there. It’s, quite literally, against the law to not follow orders, and Dave wants us to believe that the President gave an order, a whole bunch of people chose not to follow it, and both (a) there were no consequences, and (b) we haven’t heard about it yet?

I mean, even if we start from Dave’s cherry-picked premise, the most likely reasoning is probably that getting congress to sanction the bombing would save his increasingly unpopular administration some headache when the NIE came out.