In one of today’s blogosphere debates, Moonbattery has taken on The Democratic Daily for promoting some of the nutty conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. I can’t argue with Moonbattery‘s take on these “tinfoil-hat ravings” and this is consistent with many other posts there which exclude The Democratic Daily from the reality based community.
If only Moonbattery could limit themselves to debunking such conspiracy theories. Ok, I’d even forgive a few chuckles. Unfortunately Moonmattery is guilty of quite a bit of moonbattery of their own. They portray the views expressed at The Democratic Daily as representing the “raw insanity driving today’s Democrat Party.” As long time readers here know, I left The Democratic Daily months ago finding that some of the views there were out of touch with both reality and liberal thought. I’m clearly not alone in that assessment as both readership and links to the site have dropped tremendously since I left. Moonbattery is practicing serious moonbattery in suggesting that the moonbat views at The Democratic Daily are representative of liberal belief.
Moonbattery also uses this to smear John Kerry, citing Pamela as “Hanoi John’s official blogger.” Early in the campaign, Pamela did have occasional posts on the Kerry campaign’s official blog. However, during the campaign she was removed from this position, and even banned from posting at the campaign’s official forum. (To be fair to Pamela, the latter was partially a matter of problems with the forum administrator who had a bad habit of banning Kerry supporters who got on his bad side. He even banned me on one occasion, but the campaign quickly overruled that and reduced his authority. Pamela did remain banned.)
The reference to “Hanoi John” is not the only slur on John Kerry, who has absolutely nothing to do with the these conspiracy theories. Moonbattery could do a much better job at debunking moonbat ideas if they stuck to the facts as opposed to promoting their own moonbat theories on John Kerry and on “liberal profs” teaching history classes.
There is also more on this at Screw Loose Change, The Jawa Report, and Mein BlogVault
Update: Pamela has gone into her “poor innocent me” act in a post at The Democratic Daily accusing me of harassing her. What she doesn’t admit is that she launched two attacks on me in the past few weeks and has been smearing me for months. I have made it clear that I intended to ignore her as long as she ceased her constant attacks on me. I have also warned her of the consequences if she did not.
Pamela denies taking any controversial positions. Maybe in her mind our disagreements do not represent controversial positions, but most would see it differently. We’ve disagreed over her belief in astrology, her belief in ghosts, her support for anti-evolution writings, her dismissal of holocaust denial, and her defense of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism.
Pamela also writes, “I am deeply saddened that I feel the need to distance myself from my blog at this time…” If I only had a nickle for every time she has said she was giving up blogging, including when she began having the above noted problems with the Kerry campaign and virtually every time we’ve had a dispute. One of the advantages of blogging is that the views and actions of others don’t really matter. When I found The Democratic Daily intolerable to remain at, it was an easy matter to start my own blog and what goes on there barely matters (other than for ocassionally having to defend myself from Pamela’s attacks.)
Update II: Pamela insists on keeping this going with post after post. She has once again assumed her role of blog police, saying it is never right for a liberal blogger to criticize anything said by another liberal. As should be clear to readers here, I call them as I see them, even if it means disagreeing with a liberal or agreeing with a conservative when they are right. It is also rather hypocritical of Pamela to complain about my responses to Kos for his attacks on Kerry now when she similarly criticized Kos over this herself. As usual, Pamela just loves to twist the facts to portray everyone but her as in some way evil. To Pamela, the fact that I have disagreed with other liberals justifies any type of attack from her.
Most of Pamela’s nonsense is not worth the time to respond too, but one other item is so illustrative of the absurd way she thinks that I cannot help but to note it. Pamela writes, “Since Ron professes to not believe in astrology I question why this is in his Blogger profile: Astrological Sign: Aquarius, Zodiac Year: Sheep.”
The reason it is in my profile is simple. When I signed up for Blogger, the form asked for my birthday, or maybe even for my sign, and I filled out the form. Astrology for most is a meaningless diversion and if Blogger put it in my profile it wasn’t an issue. Most people can have a laugh reading their newspaper horoscope while realizing that astrology is bunk, but Pamela sure went ballistic when I first mentioned that opinion at The Democratic Daily. As to why an understanding of science, as opposed to promotion of pseudo-science, is important, see the post I wrote after the initial post here.
This does not mean we can’t find amusement with astrology and other forms of fortune telling. I did get a laugh from opening a fortune cookie at lunch last week. The fortune said I should take a trip to the west, and I have recently planned a trip to San Francisco and vicinity. Of course I understand coincidence while others may not.
Pamela also takes a portion of a comment from me out of context to attack in her last post, and makes up some nonsense about blocking her trackbacks, but again, that is just typical Pamela being Pamela. No truth or fair play is ever to be expected.
Update III: Will the laughs never end today? We even have a commenter (who just must be a friend of Pamela’s) who is responsible for a first here at Liberal Values. I thought I’ve been hit with virtually every insult imaginable (in comments which usually don’t make it through moderation). Today we have a new one as someone came here to both defend astrology and to call me a “poopie head.” I’m afraid that admitting to a belief in astrology pretty much excludes one from being able to meaningfully insult anyone.
As moonbattery is the topic of the day, I’ll also note that a reader has emailed a tip that Deepak Chopra is at it again. This time he babbles about quantum theory and consciousness. Fortunately the commenters at Huffington Post usually do a good of debunking his nonsense and I might just leave this to them. I don’t know if I can handle the polling results on belief in evolution, astrology, and Chopra in one day.
Update IV: More in the email bag. A reader from Northern California wishes me a good trip to his region and requests to point out that “not all Californians are astrology-believing moonbats.” I never doubted that, but will still pass on his recommended links. Check out The Astrology Defense Kit from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the section on astrology at Bad Astronomy.
Update V: Showing that liberals and conservatives can join together in common cause, The Jawa reports on how I “was attacked by Pamela” and comes to defend against “the Twoofers and their ancillary legions of astrologers, Holocaust deniers, liars, huxters, frauds, film school dropouts and pizza delivery boys.” Now I’m awaiting input from the Ewoks.
Update VI: Shouting The Loudest In the Blogosphere
Update VII: New evidence came out debunking 9/11 denialism, frustrating the conspiracy theorists at The Democratic Daily leading to new round of personal attacks. My replies are here and here.
Update VIII: World Net Daily Attacks The Democratic Daily Over Violence and Porn–What Irony