The Tactics Of Smear and Hatred At The Democratic Daily

Earlier today I received email regarding the usual personal attacks coming from The Democratic Daily. My web access was limited to my Palm, but I but did manage to post this brief comment earlier before I could get to a real computer.

As my long time readers know, I have been subjected to personal attacks which actually started when I was a writer at The Democratic Daily. The latest dispute arose over their denial of the fact that we were attacked by al Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001. Posting new evidence to the contrary earlier today apparently was the last straw. Lacking any rational arguments, they returned to the tactics they prefer–personal smears.

If this was just someone expressing their personal views I really wouldn’t care. Unfortunately a few conservative blogs quoted the statements at The Democratic Daily alleging they were representative of most Democrats and liberals. My response to this not surprisingly set off another round of attacks. As another blog reported:

The post I put up a few days back had little to do with the actual content of this minor loony-lib-on-regular-lib blogfight, but the former official Kerry blogger/Democratic Daily editor known as Pamela who’d been pushing a debunked and loony 9-11 Twoofer documentary was apparently frothing at a fellow lib’s blog (who was doing nothing more than pointing out what was happening in his post, and linking us in the process).

Ron at Liberal Values (a former blogger at Democratic Daily) was attacked by Pamela, who seems to have as much a problem resiting juvenile agitprop videos as she does remembering facts in her recent history. A few other moonbats trickle in and begin flinging stuff about astrology, the lack of leftist purity that Ron posseses and (of course) Twooferism, at which Ron rightfully balks.

I can’t say I sympathize with some of Ron’s politics, but I can certainly sympathize with the need to push back against the Twoofers and their ancillary legions of astrologers, Holocaust deniers, liars, huxters, frauds, film school dropouts and pizza delivery boys. Good luck – I’ve been barking up that tree for a while now.

Subsequently there was further evidence of the need to disassociate liberal thought from 9/11 denialism when Fred Thompson wrote an editorial tying in Harry Reid and bloggers to these beliefs. Thompson went from there to discredit the more established liberal views opposing the Iraq War.

Disagreements over their 9/11 denialism and belief in conspiracy theories wasn’t our first disagreement. Other ideas promoted at The Democratic Daily which I objected to while there included backing anti-evolution writings passed off as new age beliefs, conspiracy theories, astrology, and even belief in ghosts (which Todd also states he disagrees with, but I was in the minority at the time this came up at The Democratic Daily.) There was also conflict when I objected to Pamela’s use of “Michele Malkin” type tactics, such as posting personal information on a conservative blogger after he requested it not be posted out of fear of it endangering his job. To their mind set, personal attacks and other unethical conduct is perfectly acceptable as long as it is aimed at someone they disagree with.

Ultimately I left The Democratic Daily in response to the defense of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism. Criticism of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial didn’t fit into their mind set at the time, and lock step agreement with their beliefs was expected.

Pamela and others at The Democratic Daily continued their attacks long after I left, and should I respond, or demonstrate the problems there which precipitated these disputes, they would play the victim. In their minds, they can attack me at will, but I am not allowed to respond. They have even escalated this strategy by claiming that any criticism of Pamela Leavey constitutes sexism simply because she is female. I have been just as harsh in condemning the beliefs she promotes when coming from people of either sex. Pamela is the only female blogger I am aware of who has expressed the belief she cannot be criticized or disagreed with because she is female, and then claim this is a feminist viewpoint.

The attackers at The Democratic Daily have had a tough time finding anything of substance to use against me, so as a sign of their desperation we not only see this perversion of feminism to make false attacks, but today Todd fabricates charges of “misogyny and sexism.” Todd’s evidence comes down to a post mocking Lindsay Lohan which included a photo in which one nipple is vaguely visible. By Todd’s logic, most of the mass media would be guilty of “misogyny and sexism,” not to mention the sites which have posted far more revealing photos of Lohan. Todd also resorts to misquotation and taking statements out of context to give them a different meaning, and even thinks he’s being clever for attacking me for having a mustache!

Todd also implies that the photo of Lindsay Lohan is how I build blog traffic and is a typical post here. A look at the site would reveal a completely different type of blog than Todd describes, but Todd has never been one to let facts get in the way of his rhetoric. Different people read different blogs for different reasons, but one niche I have concentrated on is debunking absurdities and hypocrisy regardless if coming from the left or right.

While hardly competing with Daily Kos, this strategy has worked well. After I left The Democratic Daily, readership there fell in half and readership here has moved well beyond theirs. Links, as well as readership, in the blogosphere are frequently directly proportional to age of the blog. Although my blog is significantly younger, Liberal Values has earned an authority of 473 from Technorati, with The Democratic Daily trailing at 348. As for Todd, his blog has an authority of 40.

With regular readers increasingly turning to RSS readers, I consider growth in subscribers to possibly be a more important measure than page loads. Each day Feedburner calculates an estimate of the number of computers subscribed to each member blog’s feed. Today Liberal Values has 3360 subscribers, and this number has been increasing by about one hundred every week. The Democratic Daily has 108 subscribers total. Liberal Values has added 130 subscribers in the ten days since my first post on 9/11 conspiracy theories. This makes their recurrent talk at The Democratic Daily of having Liberal Values boycotted or repudiated sound like a rather lame threat.

Some have expressed surprise over such great differences in belief between two blogs on the left. The left versus right division is only one division of beliefs. There are many other intellectual battles which are equally important. This includes defending reason and science over superstition, and opposing bigotry regardless of the source. I will continue to disagree with leftist blogs such as The Democratic Daily when they spread claims that the attack on the United States on 9/11 was committed by parties other than al Qaeda terrorists, that Mel Gibson was just a misunderstood actor with a bit too much to drink, or that astrology and new age beliefs can be a substitute for modern science.

If The Democratic Daily chooses to respond to disagreements over these issues with personal attacks, so be it. Just don’t be surprised if I respond.

Update: Poodle Balling and Blogging

Update II: World Net Daily Attacks The Democratic Daily Over Violence and Porn–What Irony

21 Comments

  1. 1
    The Populist says:

    Keep yer chin up kid. don’t let these morons bug ya. 🙂 Not all progessives buy into the B.S. that 9/11 was done by Bush. He knew, but he didn’t do it, he’s not that bright. 😀

    take care,

    -TP

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Bush got warnings, but he wasn’t bright enough to put 2 and 2 together. If he really was in on it, I would think he would have positioned himself to look like a great leader immediately. Instead we have him reading a children’s book, and basically freezing for the next two days.

    It’s also hard to imagine the government successfully keeping something like this a secret. They couldn’t even keep people quiet about a handful of fired federal attorneys.

  3. 3
    Beano says:

    Great Ron, you blow out Ginny’s argument so she and her sicko friends launch another attack. Now even disbelief in 911 conspiracy theories makes you a woman hater. Talk about lack of courage in their conictions to fall back on this line. You are way too soft on them. You could say the sky is blue and they’d disagree with you. They are a pack of far left antisemites who will never be happy until sensible liberals like you are purged from the net roots.

  4. 4
    Marvin says:

    Yes, keep your chin up. Someone’s got to speak up against anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, and their kind. I remember how they tried to shut you up at Democratic Daily when you tried to add some sense to their dscussions. Once they defended Mel Gibson against your criticism and shut up attacks on him you were smart to leave.. It is a shame that they couldn’t leave it at that and had to continue their personal attacks on you.

  5. 5
    dlm says:

    Careful Ron, there’s a following for Anti-Semetic Astrologers and Ghost Hunters who Deny the Holocaust and 9/11 Attacks. You’re just helping them all find the Democratic Daily and we don’r really want all of them getting together, do we? Morons of the world unite, and all that crap.
    It was a hoot to look at Sitemeter and see how thier readership really did drop in half after you left. Too bad they no longer allow visitors to see the Sitemeter numbers. They are now more of a little discussion group than a real blog. Come to think of it, that’s the problem. They are a small echo chamber where everyone has the same views and they actually believe the stuff they say.

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    We all have our own niche to fill!

    I do see the dangers you warn of, but it also works in reverse. Those who want to read a blog promoting liberal values while also debunking the ideas of the looney left as well as right might find Liberal Values thanks to all posts attacking the site.

    I’m hardly surprised that they now block access to their site meter. I bet it won’t be long before they also dump the icon showing number of subscribers thru feedburner. I note that since the numbers were posted above less than two days ago, Liberal Values has gained 21 new subscribers and The Democratic Daily has gained 2.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    There’s an update on those Feedburner numbers from the last comment. Liberal Values is up to 3402 subscribers to the RSS feed, representing a gain of 42 since Wednesday when the latest attacked was launched. The Democratic Daily has now fallen from 108 to 102 subscribers. Their latest attempt to keep readers away from here appears to have failed, and perhaps even back fired against them.

    (After today’s numbers for Friday it might not be so clear as the weekend numbers sometimes do fall due to people having work computers off and therefore not being seen as subscribed to the feed.)

  8. 8
    karen says:

    Maybe its the weekend thing, but their feedburner count has fallen into the 60s. Now there saying that Liberal Values is getting most of its hits from people doing searches for “poodle balling.” What do you say to that?

  9. 9
    Ron Chusid says:

    That would be the interpretation of someone who is ignorant of math and how search engines work.

    At the time of the first comment, 84 out of the last 4000 hits came from searches for “poodle balling.” Poodle balling is mentioned on the blog due to quoting from the episode of Will and Grace with Britney Spears. Britney plays a character who acts as if she is a right winger, but then confesses: “I’m not who you think I am. My real name is Peg. And I’m a hardcore lesbian. I’m into leather play, butch white girls, skunkin’, pullin’ the blinds, and poodle balling. Whatever you got, I’ll eat it, snort it, or ride it, baby.”

    As a consequence of quoting this, about 2% of the hits involved searches for poodle balling. As this is a specific phrase, those looking for it generally put ‘poodle balling’ into the search engine exactly the same way. There are also thousands of searches based on specific political questions. These account for the vast majority of searches to the blog, but each individual search was only used once or twice, so these don’t rank as high as searches for ‘poodle balling’ or for other leading searches such as Paris Hilton and Heroes.

    Incidentally, one of the top searches at The Democratic Daily is for “Ann Coulter Nude.” Before anyone gets too excited, or repulsed, it is a picture of a monster without clothes. (Literally a monster, not Ann Coulter.)

    This is one of the reasons I pay more attention to RSS subscribers than hits on the blog. Those who subscribe to the RSS feed are interested in the content of the blog. With search engine hits we get primarily people searching for meaningful comments, but there’s always a fair number of other searches. That is not to say that looking for discussion of Britney’s appearance on Will and Grace isn’t a decent reason to search for the blog. After all, there is a substantial amount here on non-political topics such as television, and Britney’s appearance on Will and Grace did have its political aspects.

    It’s also interesting to look at search words ranked by visit length as opposed to visit number. As people looking for non-political topics generally visit briefly, the topics on this search are generally more serious ones. Current top searches include “growing libertarianism among the liberals” and individuals such as Ron Paul, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani. However “poodle balling” still leads this list, indicating that people searching for “poodle balling” wound up reading much more of the blog.

  10. 10
    Skpetic says:

    What really pisses me off about these morons, moonbats, and hate mongers is that they aren’t happy expousing their lunatic ideas on their own web sites. They also feel the need to go around attacking everyone that doesn’t agree with them.

    Democratic Daily wrote all those smears on you after you disproved their claims that George Bush was really behind attacking the WTC. Then Shakesville had a DOS attack after a post on another wacko group.

    You have been down a couple of times recently, and then had those strange problems on Wednesday. Do you think Democratic Daily was behind these. I wouldn’t put anything beyond kooks who defend Mel Gibson and holocaust deniers assuming lunatic believers in astrolgy and ghosts could handle such a thing.

  11. 11
    Ron Chusid says:

    Skeptic,

    I doubt the people at The Democratic Daily could have handled this, at least on their own.

    It certainly is a characteristic of fanatics that they not only spread their beliefs but attack those who disagree, as we saw with last week’s attacks.

  12. 12
    Skeptic says:

    Dr Ron:

    Not only do they attack, they think they are so right in their beliefs that they feel right in spreading lies. I bet they think that since their views on astrology, Jews, conspiracy theories and other moonbat ideas are right, and you are wrong, they feel they are justified in spreading lies about you if it helps them spread their “truth”

  13. 13
    Skeptic says:

    Here’s another blog posting on a related subject, testing astrology

    Link

    I am just certain that if astrology fails to hold up to double blind tests it will ba abandoned 🙂

  14. 14
    Skeptic says:

    I couldn’t resist checking out the looney bin at Democratic Daily. They still can’t put together a coherent thought. Astrology Guy has a poorly written post which seems to be defending Michael Moore. Conspiracy Theory Lady uses that to attack you for writing a favorable review of Sicko, and then also has favorable comments on it. Have you read her moronic comment?

    How do you like that Dr Ron, even when they agree with you they still attack you for your position. I see why you left those kooks.

    I’m sure that any moment now that Todd Guy will come and attack you too. Actually I think Todd is a child molester. I have no evidence, but if he can make up things about you, I can just as easily make up things about him.

  15. 15
    Ron Chusid says:

    Skeptic,

    If they had any concept of the meaning of double blind tests, they wouldn’t believe in astrology to begin with. Still, the idea of testing (or inability to test) astrology was interesting to read.

    I got a couple of emails with the post and comment at The Democratic Daily. I think that Ginny is trying to be clever, but she really just shows how they have no concept of evaluating material based upon evidence. Everything is personal there. If they like the writer, they agree. if they dislike the writer they disagree. They easily dispense with the cognitive dissonance which would be created by agreeing with me by finding a way to attack me even if we are taking the same position on Sicko.

    I think Ginny is trying to compare Sicko to her support for the 9/11 conspiracy theory movie shie believes. in. Because I warn against liberal being discredited for backing such conspiracy movies, she claims I would believe liberals shouldn’t support anything done by Michael Moore because he is fat and controversial.

    Of course in my case I’m concerned about the evidence they present, not who is presenting the evidence It doesn’t matter if Michael Moore is fat or controversial if he is right about the problems with American health care. I also note that he white washed some of the problems in other countries. Again, it comes down to arguing based upon facts, not turning everything into personal attacks.

    While Moore’s movie can be evaluated based upon the facts, the 9/11 conspiracy theories have been pretty well debunked. I included links in other threads discussing this. As she has no concept of fact checking or judging a work on its merits, Ginny cannot understand why I would dismiss her 9/11 conspiracy movie, dismiss part of what Moore says, but still write a favorable review based upon the most important aspect of the movie–his accurate description of the problems in the US.

    As for Todd, there’s no need to make up things or resort to their tactics. I’ll stick to the truth. That gives plenty of grounds to knock them on if so desired.

  16. 16
    battlebob says:

    The trouble with all the conspirers is they give those who really try to live in a reality-based world and debate the right-wingnuts a bad name.
    A lot of sites do not encourage critical thinking skills. Noteworthy are the former Deaniacs at Democracy for America. A lot of their members defend their embracing every theory on face value as healthy. It is if marginalization is your goal.
    The neocon right is crumbling every day and we can encourage their demise by sticking to the facts and being logical in our presentations.

  17. 17
    Ron Chusid says:

    Battlebob,

    Right, that is one of the points I was making when The Democratic Daily launched their latest smear campaign. In this specific case, I quoted Fred Thompson trying to equate the belief that Bush was behind 9/11 with the belief that Bush lied us into war, claiming that both are just crazy ideas held by bloggers. In reality, the first is a crazy idea held by a minority of bloggers, while the second has considerable evidence for it.

    So many of the political battles today are not so much over differnt opinions but over differences over the facts (largely due to the success of the right wing media). Liberals have the advantage of being reality based, but this advantage is nullified when we have liberal sites promoting conspiracy theories and astrology. Making matters worse, some of the right wing blogs were quoting this stuff from The Democratic Daily and claiming that this represent the views of Kerry (as Pamela once worked for his blog before they removed her) and from there all Democrats and liberals. Similarly we had the Armstrong issue with astrology. At least Armstrong kept quiet about astrology and that might have blown over, but those remaining at The Democratic Daily insisted in making a lot of noise defending their bizarre beliefs.

  18. 18
    Ron Chusid says:

    Mary,

    I haven’t read any of this over there, but I’m really not surprised. I’m sure issues such as the difference between conditions and preconditions in speaking of diplomacy are well over her head.

    Agree that rankings from advocacy groups on voting records means little in a situation such as this. So many votes come down to party line. What is significant in comparing such candidates is not the mass number of party line votes, but where they differ. In the Senate they vote on what is before them. A President sets the agenda, and differences in attitude which might not be seen based upon voting record become more important.

    I’m surprised Pamela is backing Hillary, especially considering how Hillary stabbed Kerry in the back at the time of the joke on Bush getting us stuck in Iraq. Of course she might share an affinity for back stabbers.

    Did she really compare Obama’s criticism of Hillary to Dean’s criticism of Kerry? That’s really amazing. The two situations are totally differnt. In the case of Dean vs. Kerry, Dean was twisting the meaning of Kerry’s IWR vote to claim Kerry supported the war while Dean opposed it. In reality both Kerry and Dean had essentially the same position prior to the war. In contrast, Obama had a distnctly different view of the war prior to its start. Obama was right and Hillary was wrong, and Obama makes an excellent point when he says this.

    Edwards very well may have been complaining of the media coverage but his comment would have sounded a lot less paranoid if he had been specific as opposed to ranting about an unidentified “they.” The other problem is that other candidates are out there talking about the issues which Edwards claims “they” are trying to keep from being discussed. The criticism of Edwards specifically is distinct from that of the other candidates due to what Edwards himself has done.

  19. 19
    jimmy says:

    Mary got it wrong on one point. Pamela says she isn’t supporting Hillary. For some unknown reason she just decided to write a one sided post which ignores all the important issues, ignores how Hillary started the name calling, and ignores how Obama was right in the specific context where he used Bush-lite. ,Pamela may be a shill for Hillary, but she is not endorsing her. I wouldn’t expect an anti-semite like her to give someone like Obama a break, but knowing how dumb Pamela is she probably thinks O’Bama is Irish and she is just prejudiced against the Irish.

  20. 20
    Ron Chusid says:

    Jimmy,

    No, I never have heard Pamela express any signs of prejudice against the Irish. 🙂

    Your account otherwise makes more sense. While I don’t know why Pamela would defend Hillary on this dispute with Obama, she didn’t seem to like Hillary much in the past.

    Obama might have gone a litte too far with “Bush light” but there was far more justification for it than Hillary’s claim that Obama’s proposals were naive or irresponsible–especially when she has taken Obama’s position on at least two other ocassions. On the other hand, there is a Bush-light characteristic to opposing diplomacy. Hillary really backed herself into a corner on this one.

  21. 21
    No More Smears says:

    Smears, Smears, Smears. Now Dem Daily has endorsed Obama and is repeating all the smears against Obama. How disgusting!

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