March 05, 2004
It Takes A Lot of Nerve To Post This
Glenn Reynolds and LT Smash have a lot of nerve accusing Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle of "politicizing" 9/11. Both women have lost their husbands at the WTC. The reason that they have not been happy with the President is because the White House has been constantly stonewalling the 9/11 Commission. Even Republican and commission chairman Tom Kean has gotten fed up with it.
Reynolds and Smash feel it is just partisan politics. I wasn't aware that Breitweiser and Gabrielle worked for the DNC.
Don't know much about Reynolds, but I read Lt. Smash's blog while he was in Kuwait, and thought he did a good job of revealing just enough. I stopped reading it after he came back to the US. He claims to be a social liberal and an economic conservative, but his views aren't llberal in any way I'd recognize. And, he seemed to be a little too happy with the attention he gotten - empowered. in a sense. with internet attention in the grander scheme of things.
On the other hand, he seems like a good guy in a lot of ways, but not someone we should rely on as an expert.
I don't think his opinion makes any more difference than mine (or yours) does.
This article explains how Dick Cheney stonewalled Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle and tried to stop the 9/11 Commission from getting off the ground. These women caught Cheney's lackey in Congress, Portor Goss, hiding behind a door because he didn't want to face them. Amazing.
"I don't think his opinion makes any more difference than mine (or yours) does."
ok. just for fun, path, lt. smash averages nearly 4000 hits per day. glenn reynolds, also known as instapundit, averages closer too 100k hits per day.
so if a web presence matters, whose opinion matters more: widely read people (even if you disagree with them) or yours?
it could be yours, im not really arguing that. what is mofi stats lately? what makes someone's opinion matter more, on the web? isn't it arguably reader stats? or isn't it? worth a discussion.
Owl - sure, it's worth a discussion, but who's "hitting" those sites? I don't know that instapundit or lt. smash are getting more than momentary attention from anyone who doesn't agree with them. And, check me if I'm wrong, but the same 104,000 people may be accessing those sites on a daily basis (or maybe the same 20,000 checking them out several times a day. How many people access the internet on a daily) basis - and what percentage of that is 104K, or 20K, or whatever?
Monkeyfilter's statistics don't really enter into the fray, here, in my opinion. This is not a personal site dedicated to a specific political position, though we do have some political debate. No one has referred to MoFi's hits to support a position - and it wouldn't do them any good if they did since the topics discussed are much broader, or sillier, than those on political sites.
If you agree with the opinions of instapundit and lt. smash, that's fine, but you haven't convinced me that they should get anymore credence than any of the others written by individuals with an agenda. The nice think about MoFi is that the agenda is secret and only known by those of us with a user number less that 100. (Kidding, of course.)
Rush Limbaugh also likes to point to his popularity when people point out how utterly wrong and stupid his arguments are.
Lt. Smash and Ted Rall: birds of a feather?
path - i worded my question badly. first it shouldn't have been put just to you, i meant anyone who thought the question was interesting. any other pronoun in my last post should be taken in the same sense as the 'royal we'. second i wasn't trying to convince anyone of the 'rightness' of either of those guys opinions.
the debate i was proposing was that someone's opinion makes more of a difference the wider an audience it reaches, even if it makes no difference to any one person.
really it was just an idle thought at an idle moment.
Glenn Reynolds has a couple updates to the post.
ANOTHER UPDATE: James Lileks, as usual, nails it:
Well. It’s called running on one’s record. They get to do that. But now people who were secretly relieved that Bush was in the White House after 9/11 are complaining that Bush is reminding us . . . that he was in the White House after 9/11. . . .
By this logic, FDR should have run his '44 campaign on his domestic agenda.
Read the whole thing.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Elizabeth King emails:
What do you want to bet that the Democrats had the firefighter union guy and the angry 9/11 relatives lined up and ready to complain before the Bush ads were even in the can?
It was obvious to anyone with a brain (or even just an ear, since the talking heads have all discussed it) that Bush would run on national security and the War on Terror. The Dems are doing their best to shut that issue down, from characterizing any criticism of Kerry's national security record as an attack on his patriotism, to smearing the President as a National Guard deserter, to now decrying any reference to 9/11 as insensitive to the victims and their survivors. The speed with which the chorus of complaints arose (before most people had even seen the ads) points to a war room rapid response team, rather than a genuine sense of outrage.
I don't blame the Dems for their strategy. What makes me angry is how the media just eat this stuff up without any kind of critical analysis, and how flatfooted the Bush team is in anticipating and responding to the Democrat attacks. The Bush campaign better get in the game, if they plan to win.
Actually, I think this just underscores the Democrats' sheer desperation and cluelessness on national security, and their accompanying desire to get the subject off the table -- which is truly pathetic since they've had two years to gear up. It bespeaks a cultural inability within the party to come to grips with dangerous realities. I think that Kerry is aware of the problem, but it's probably too ingrained to do much about.
Sadly, the press is largely in the tank for the Democrats on this, which is why that we have to have bloggers with Google looking into the backgrounds of these complainers instead of, you know, people who are supposed to investigate facts for a living. You know that if people with these sorts of connections to the Bush campaign were complaining about Kerry ads, we'd be hearing about it.
***
So Bush is now FDR. How come the third plane hit the Pentagon after Andy Card told him that America was under attack? This was after the second plane hit WTC. How come Donald Rumsfeld sat in his office and continued to do paperwork after the planes hit the WTC? He didn't view the situation as a threat until the third plane hit the Pentagon and he looked out his office window. Why didn't he know the country was under attack?
The Bush commercial in question shows ground zero and rescue workers carrying a flag-drapped body. Is that really in good taste? Ask yourself that question. Also ask yourself what Glenn Reynolds and Lt Smash's reaction would be if John Kerry ran that commercial.
Here's a news piece from Feedroom.com on the Bush commercial. Go to the In the News link on the top left.
That's enough about Reynolds now.
I have a friend who was in Manhattan and lost friends at the WTC. She wrote blog posts of that day here, here, and here. She wrote a guest post in my blog in response to the Bush ads and Glenn Reynolds.
Glenn Reynolds calls those who criticize Bush’s tactless re-election ads, complainers. I think that’s rich. He thinks that we need to be “reminded” about “what this is all about.”
I’m here to tell Glenn Reynolds that I don’t need a reminder of “what this is all about.” I couldn’t forget what happened if I tried, and for the record, I have tried. I’ve tried harder to forget what happened on that day more than anything else in my life, but the events of that day have so altered the course of my life and the lives of nearly everyone I know, that forgetting isn’t as option as much as grieving, accepting the pain and working to focus on the here and now.
homunculus linked to a blog post about how Reynolds and A Small Victory are going after firefighters and the families of victims. The woman that writes A Small Victory linked to one of my friend's 9/11 entries. Now that woman is going after people like my friend. Sad.
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