Eye on Winer

Dave doesn’t know. Observe.

I learned a new word from this movie: blowback. “The effect caused by recirculation into the source country of disinformation previously planted abroad by that country’s intelligence service in an effort to mislead the government of another country.” That might be a bit confusing. An example. Suppose the CIA does something nasty to another country, but it’s a secret, so we don’t know about it. Then the other country retalliates [sic]. We wonder why they hate us. The President explains, saying they’re evil. Sound familiar?

Two issues, we’ll deal first with the horrible example, then the horrible example itself.

While one might call the hypothetical Dave posed an example of “blowback”, it certainly does not fit within the definition that Dave posted. I can’t decide if Dave is being: 1) purposefully disingenuous, 2) simply ignorant, or 3) sees everything as a way to criticize republicans.

A correct example of the term as Dave defined it, would be a circumstance where the CIA planted false information in some foreign country — say that the US was about to run out of lumber — and that info made it back into the US. People starting to horde lumber and buy it in large quantities would be “blowback”.

Now… Dave’s “example”…

Why is it that nobody thinks it’s appropriate to blame the victim of a vicious assault or a rape, but when it comes to folks on the far left and terrorism, the victim — the US — is the blameworthy party. Not the (usually) Muslim perpetrators of the terrorism. Not the sectors of Arab and Muslim society that condone and cheer the terrorism. No, we should blame America (and, if possible, Dirty, Evil Republicans) because it is clear that were it not for something we did, we would not have become victimized.

Just like poor Susie Rape-victim… had she not been wearing those tight jeans and that low-cut top, Johnny Rapist wouldn’t have found her such an attractive target.

The whole exercise in “blaming the victim” — for assaults or terrorism is despicable.

Dave jumps on the Liberal Bandwagon.

What Kerry Actually Said:

If you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t you get stuck in Iraq.

What Kerry allegedly meant to say:

Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.

I say “allegedly” not because I’m convinced that his purpose was to insult the troops, but because even if he had, this is what he’d have said to save face when it blew up on him. But yes, Dave, he has something to apologize for. Whatever it was that he actually meant, a great many reasonable people were insulted by his remarks. And, after his spotty record of “supporting” our troops, I can’t say that I blame those people.

Granted, I think the right-wing blogosphere has gone a little crazy, but if, the day after, he had come out and said “I apologize, what I meant to say is that Bush is an idiot” it would take the teeth out of the current fracas. It would’ve also helped if he had had the presence to realize what kind of a line his intended joke was treading close to and had actually said what he allegedly intended to say.

As it stands right now, reasonable people think that he insulted our soldiers and he doesn’t think those concerns are worth addressing.

It doesn’t help that the party’s foot soldiers like Dave are rushing to his defense.

It doesn’t matter what kind, Republican or Democrat… partisanship is an ugly creature, but Dave has no problem with it… as long as you’re the right kind of partisan. How about this:

Exhibit 1: “If Bush were honorable, if he weren’t a force that put a lid on discourse by labeling people…”

Exhibit 2: “Republicans will say we’re weak for liking this. I feel sorry for them because they have so much pain.”

Exhibit 3: “Republicans have made ‘liberal’ a bad word, but they’re too dishonest to be open about it. Me, I’m openly trying to make Republican a bad word.”

I don’t get the GOP newsletter… I wonder when he started speaking for them.

Although this is sort of amusing… “Anyone with a heart and a mind who admits to being one had better explain the President and the Congress.” (From Ex. 3)

I don’t really understand that. It sounds like he wants to get emails from people who are as far to the right as he is to the left so that he can feel righteous and justified in his bliefs. I doubt very much that he would be willing to engage in a debate with any sort of intellectually honest conservative. If he did, I think he’d probably just embarrass himself.

For my part, I voted for Bush in the last election, and given the choice between Bush and Kerry again… I’d vote for Bush again. If the Democrats would step up and nominate someone with mainstream appeal instead of nominating one of the most liberal legislators in the country they would have a good shot of winning the next election, but the scoff at people like Joe Lieberman who would draw enough Republican and conservative voters to win by a landslide.

Here’s a messag to Dave: the responsibility does not lie solely with “Republican voters”, if the Democrats continue to try to ram far-leftist politics down our throats they’re going to deserve what they end up with. Why isn’t he blaming his party for not putting up an electable candidate.

After all, if you can’t beat Bush, there’s something wrong… isn’t there? (comments whining about Bush stealing elections will be unceremoniously deleted)

Dave has proven, almost an innumerable number of times, that he has as much domain knowledge about politics as Bush has about technology… here are two fine examples of Dave’s particular brand of nonsense.

As to the first… he doesn’t believe that Bush will step down at the end of his term? What sort of ridiculousness is that? “We may be in the last moments of free speech in this country” Really? What gives you that idea? I’ll be impressed if someone can find factual backing for even one of his assertions.

The second… does he not believe in terror or not believe that we’re waging a war against it? “After the latest fiasco in Congress, we’re once again dependent on the courts to uphold our basic values.” Yes… welcome to our system of government… it’s been like this the whole time.

Dave is out there on the fringe of the far left… repeating various bits of propaganda and scaremongering, but very very rarely stopping to actually think. I’m not the person who agrees with everything that Bush does, not by a long shot, but it’s people like Dave (on the left and the right) that are destroying discourse in this country.

Nobody really takes Dave’s politics seriously, I don’t think. He’s no more reliable, well reasoned, or intelligent than the Hollywood stars that you see spouting off about it.

Of course, that doesn’t stop him from yammering on. I have to wonder if he actually believes this or if he just hopes that it’s true.

He says that “Republicans can now agree” that going to Iraq was a bad idea. Of course, Liberals can also agree that it was a good idea. What’s the point?

Has it been expensive? Yeah. Has it been hard? Yeah. Have we made our country more safe? In the short-term, no… in the long term, almost certainly. Would the Iraqis prefer to still be living under Saddam? Probably the ones who used to be in power.

There were a lot of reasons to go into Iraq… (notice that Dave doesn’t say much about WMDs now that we’ve found a healthy number of them) …and while we might have been able to execute it better, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be there.

But, uh, Republicans are Evil, so they must be wrong… right?

We should all be thankful that the world is not as simple as Dave believes. Specifically, I find it interesting that Dave believes that when Bush says something, anything, that he can obligate our brave soldiers (or those of other countries) to die for it. As though anything, least of all global diplomacy, is that straight-forward.

What we have here is a cousin of the “Bush Lied, People Died” meme that became so popular among leftists who could not finger a coherent opposition to the war (of which there are many). I also find this line interesting: “an American life and an Arab life have exactly the same value.”

Depending on how we measure “value” it’s arguably true. But what does it say that about the situation when Dave generalizes “terrorists” to “Arabs” and “soldiers” to “Americans”? Maybe the argument doesn’t sound quite the same when you say “The life of one American soldier is worth exactly the same as that of a suicide bomber.”

This is not a war against the race of Arabs. It just so happens that’s what many of them are.

Dave has had a long line of posts about the women who criticized his BlogHer pieces. Today, while reading about Dave’s chat with Sylvia Paull I finally figured out why his posts irritate me.

Liz, it’s time to bend over backwards to create safety for men to speak on this subject. Many of your colleagues are already doing this. There are still a few standouts, and you are one of them. No more gender-bashing, lecturing and name-calling, and no more tolerance for that.

When women were trying to find their voice nationally, when they were pursuing suffrage and fighting for equal rights, men did not “bend over backwards to create safety”, they did everything they could to shut them down. There are two differences between that situation and this one.

First, of course, women should aspire to do better than men did at the beginning of the Women’s Lib movement. More importantly, though, this is the internet. Other people have only as much power as you give them.

If you write how you feel and people “flame” you for it (Dave’s term for people he doesn’t respect who disagree with him), the solution is not to whine about how they didn’t create a safe environment for you, the solution is to keep talking. The solution isn’t to blame your lack of interaction on previous bad experiences, the solution is to speak even louder and even more frequently if you don’t feel like it’s a “safe” environment.

They’re not saying “be a man”, Dave, they’re saying “grow a spine.” So some women disagree with you. Big deal. Welcome to life. Here on the internet those people only have as much power as you give them.

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.

Unsurprisingly, Dave shows us, again, that his true stripes are that of a traitor and coward.

Let’s go slow here. What does Dave think?

1. Israel started it… except that Hezbollah did. But that didn’t count.
2. Hezbolla has a right to defend itself. Especially if we ignore that they were the aggressors.
3. Hezbolla won, both militarily and politically. Nevermind that most folks are coming down on the same side of this issue as they do most cases of Arab terrorism and Israeli defense. Also nevermind that the scorecard doesn’t really favor Hezbolla.
4. In Dave’s world, Israel would hide its military installations amongst civillian buildings.
5. This is Bush’s fault.

Big thanks to Ben Tremblay for pointing out this one, as I had missed it first time around.